


Return To The Library

by ThatFilmComposer



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Amy Pond (mentioned) - Freeform, Cracks in Time, Doctor Who?, Episode AU: s04e08-09 Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, Gen, Parallel Universes, Return To The Library, Rory Williams (mentioned) - Freeform, The Librarians - Freeform, The Library, The Nightmare Child - Freeform, Time Lords, Time Vortex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-08 11:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatFilmComposer/pseuds/ThatFilmComposer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gravestone

**Author's Note:**

> Please note this is an AU Story, written specifically to fill in major plot holes left behind in Series 5, 6 and 7. The completed book will most likely not sync with the current storyline of Doctor Who and will not make sense/match up to Series 8.  
> However, I have worked out the master plan for this book so that it fills in major gaps left unanswered during Eleven's era - but I have also had to rewrite some Canon elements from Series 7 in particular to make the plot line of this story work. You will found out: how and why the TARDIS blew up, the reason why such a large time explosion left only minor cracks across time and space, where all the other creatures that were involved in the Time War went after Gallifrey was saved, why exactly the Time Lords broadcast "Doctor Who?" out of the crack on Trenzalore, and many other things.
> 
> So get the tissues ready, because this story might make you shed a tear right at the very end ;D Hope you enjoy "Return To The Library"!

**CHAPTER ONE**

**GRAVESTONE**

  
A cool breeze drifted through the cemetery of Lancashire, as the sun rose slowly above the horizon. Not even the smallest animal made a sound as a distinct howling noise, like a machine in much need of mechanical servicing, echoed around the silent graveyard.

_Vworrrp. Vworrrrrrp. Vworrrp._

Materialising next to a large oak tree, a 1960s, blue police-box slowly appeared, its blue lamp atop the roof pulsing brightly as the engine noise grew louder and louder until stopping with a soft _thud._

The doors opened and a young girl with brunette hair stepped out, carrying a bundle of flamboyant-coloured flowers. A much older man stepped out behind her. He had grey hair and wore an old-fashioned dark grey suit. Placing his hands behind his back, he walked alongside the young girl, through the cemetery.

“She loved her soufflés, Mum did. I could never ever seem to get it right every time I tried to cook one. It would just burn to a crisp. I always remember her saying ‘Clara, a soufflé isn’t a soufflé, a soufflé is a recipe’,” the young girl said, as she glanced down at the flowers and sniffled the petals, “where did you get these from, Doctor?”

“The annual _Intergalactic Flower Show_ , from the planet Foog. The blue ones are my favourite, bubblegum-scented,” the old man pointed at one of the large, bright-blue flowers, sitting the middle of the bouquet.

As they strolled through the cemetery, they passed the groundskeeper, who was changing the day’s date on the noticeboard, situated near the fence line of the graveyard.

It read _5 th March 2014_.

Clara and the Doctor came to a halt in front of a large black headstone. There were flowers scattered around the base, slightly shrivelled and wet from the cold weather overnight. Clara’s chin quivered slightly. Even though it had been nine years, visiting her mother’s grave was something she could never get used to.

Every day that went by, Clara always wished she could have saved her, to say goodbye to her one last time. Gripping the stems of the flowers in her hands, she knelt on the soft soil and placed the exotic-coloured bunch on its side in front of the headstone. Clara pulled the sleeve of her jacket into her hand and rubbed the wet residue off the markings of the grave:

 

ELLIE OSWALD

BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

BORN

11TH SEPTEMBER 1960

DIED

5TH MARCH 2005

 

Standing back to her feet, Clara wiped her watery eyes and cleared her throat. “Mum,” she whispered, her voice shaky and muffled, “this – this is the Doctor. He’s a friend of mine,” she gave him a side glance with a small smile, “he may look a little … old, but he’s my best friend.”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the flower bunch. The tip lit green and suddenly, the flowers grew in and around the ground, layering the entire base of the headstone in large extravagant flowers.

Clara laughed softly, covering her lips with her fingers, “Thank you, Doctor.” Smiling, the Doctor put the screwdriver back into the inside pocket of his jacket and put his hands behind his back once again.

_Bzzzzzzzz._

“Ooh,” Clara jumped slightly, pulling out from her pocket a small phone and placing it to her eye, “hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?” Clara repeated.

Suddenly, a series of long and short bleeps pierce through the speaker. “What the?” Clara pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the screen. The phone number said _Unknown_. “Doctor, listen,” Clara showed the phone to the Doctor who listened, “Odd.”

“Must be a wrong number,” shrugged Clara and clicked the ‘End’ button. With seconds, the phone buzzed to life with the Caller ID appearing as _Unknown_ once again. Clicking ‘Answer’ and hitting ‘Loudspeaker’, Clara glanced at the Doctor worryingly as the same monotone bleeps chimed through.

“Wait a minute. Listen, it’s on loop. The same beeps over and over again. It’s a message. Let’s go to the TARDIS,” the Doctor took off in the opposite direction. Clara smiled and walked over to Ellie’s headstone. She pressed her fingers to her lips and placed them on top of the gravestone, “Love you, Mum.” With a broad smile, Clara jogged away to the TARDIS.

The Doctor was racing from one side to the other of the console when Clara entered the Control Room. “Odd way to send a message, don’t you think? Why would anyone send an audial message of beeps to a mobile phone?” piped the Doctor, ushering Clara to join him by the console. “So it was a message?” Clara responded. “Well, I would have said probably not, until it rang again seconds late. May I borrow your phone?” said the Doctor, examining the monitor above the console buttons. Clara passed her phone over and the Doctor placed it into one of the device input channels installed in part of the console.

Clara walked around the room, “Why not send a text message, or actually speak the message in a phone call-”

“Of course!” The Doctor exclaimed, Clara jumping in fright, “the message was actually spoken in the phone call. How could I not have realised that?!”

Clara coughed, looking at the Doctor with her eyebrows raised, “Care to share?”

The Doctor laughed, “Morse code.”

Clara folded her arms in front of her and stared at the Doctor, “Someone sent a message to my mobile phone, through Morse code? That’s the equivalent of sending a text message through an email?”

“Obviously there was a reason why they could only send the message through in beeps. But the main question is,” the Doctor turned to Clara with a wide smile, “What does the message say?”

“You’re loving this, aren’t you,” laughed Clara.

“Every second of it. Whole new regeneration, whole new kind of fun!” The Doctor swung the monitor around to Clara’s side of the console as he connected Clara’s mobile to the TARDIS loudspeaker. Within seconds, the repeated beeps of Morse code echoed around the spacious room. “The TARDIS is translating the code as we speak,” continued the Doctor, “should be on that monitor any second.”

Clara watched as the lines and dots of the Morse code message appeared on screen. Below it, the code began being translated into English. “Okay, it’s here. ‘Urgent: priority message to TARDIS. Doctor, return to the Library,” Clara read as the words appeared on the monitor. The Doctor looked up, staring at Clara, “What does it say?”

“It’s on loop, just like you said. ‘Urgent: priority message to TARDIS. Doctor-”

“‘Return to the Library’ …” The Doctor finished, his entire body frozen. “Is there something wrong?” asked Clara, stepping around the console. The Doctor remained completely still and after a few seconds, turned his head to Clara and asked, “Fancy a trip to the biggest library in the universe?”

As Clara nodded with a grin upon her face, the Doctor began clicking buttons all over the console and the TARDIS began to take off into the time vortex. “Doctor, I have a vague memory – I don’t exactly know how, but it’s just there. You’ve been to the Library before, haven’t you?” Clara said, looking at the Doctor who had become rigid again.

“Y-Yes I have.”

“I have no idea how but I can remember there were creatures in the Library, correct? Their name, ugh,” Clara slapped her forehead, “it’s right there staring me in the face. Vas-”

“Vashta Nerada,” finished the Doctor, his head hanging low.

Clara watched as the Doctor slowly walked away from the Console and stopped at the railing surrounding the console platform. “Piranhas of the dark, the dust in sunbeams. They hatched in the thousands of books that were in the Library at the time. Took over the planet and nearly killed everyone that was on the surface before the Computer Core of the planet, the biggest hard-drive in the universe, saved everyone by putting them all in its virtual world whilst millions of Vashta Nerada hatched above.”

Clara stepped forward, watching the Doctor carefully, “Did you – I mean, could you save them?”

“The population were all saved from the hard-drive, yes, but I wasn’t the one who stopped the Vashta,” said the Doctor softly, his voice trailing away.

“Who did?” asked Clara, as she stood by the Doctor at the railing.

“Someone,” the Doctor’s voice broke slightly and he clearly his throat, “someone very dear to me.” All of a sudden, he straightened up and wiped his eyes, which were slightly watery, and walked back over to the TARDIS console.

“Since then, Galactic Species Control have removed the Vashta Nerada from the planet and rigorously cleaned the planet’s extensive book collection of any that were remaining there unhatched.

“Perhaps, they missed some, and they’ve run amok,” laughed the Doctor, as he watched the console monitor, showing the Time Vortex outside, “let’s go take a peek.”

 

            


	2. A Room Of Books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

**CHAPTER TWO**

**A ROOM OF BOOKS**

  
The TARDIS landed in a large hall with rows of long oak tables, stretching the length of the room. The Doctor opened the police box doors and glanced outside, “This is eerily disturbing.”

            Clara pushed him out of the TARDIS and pulled the doors closed behind her. “Strange, has everyone gone to lunch or something?” The Doctor looked around at the surprising empty vicinity, “I really wasn’t in the mood of catching Vashta Nerada again. Although, I hope they haven’t had lunch in this room, considering the silence and emptiness of it.”

            “What, they _eat_ you?!” exclaimed Clara in horror, wrapping her arms around herself. “Well, they don’t call them Kittens of the Dark, do they?” joked the Doctor, “last time I met them, I was with an archaeological expedition group who had broken through the deadlocks that had sealed the planet for a hundred years. They came through in space suits, to learn why the planet had been quarantined for so long, and they had absolutely no idea millions of Vashta Nerada had hatched all over the world. They ate the flesh of poor Miss Evangelista, Proper Dave, Other Dave and Anita, used what was left of their bones and took over their suits, animating their dead corpses inside.”

            “Oh, god! Well, I’m not staying here!” snapped Clara, turning around and heading for the TARDIS. “Wait, wait, wait!” cried the Doctor, “look around. They eat flesh and leave the bones. If they feasted on everyone that was in this room, where are all the bones?”

            Clara turned slowly, glancing in every possible direction before looking at the Doctor. “Well?” asked the Doctor, opening his arms wide and spinning around on the spot. “If I see one skull or set of ribs, I’ll be right back in that police box making myself a soufflé,” growled Clara, pointing from the Doctor to the TARDIS sternly, “and I won’t be coming back out until we’re off this planet!”

            “Attempting,” the Doctor replied.

            Clara raised her eyebrows, “What?”

            “ _Attempting_ to make a soufflé,” the Doctor winked, turning away to investigate the room. Clara cracked a small smile as she followed after him.

            The Doctor walked to the wide doors at the end of the hall they had materialised in. The Doctor pushed one of them open and walked out into a brightly lit corridor. Walking over to a nearby window, the Doctor saw the spectacular landscape of BioCity, the metropolis of biographies. It was the Doctor’s favourite capital of The Library. The skyscrapers, named after historical and universal beings that had influenced the universe, towered over the streets below, sparkling in the dazzling sun rising across the sky. _The Underline_ , the public transportation connecting every skyscraper of the city for easy commutation for visitors, buzzed away between buildings. The transportation network of the Library was much more advanced than that of Earth’s. _The Underline_ was a network of skyways, the equivalent of subways however aboveground and hundreds of meters high over the streets around the city. Metal rails were not necessary as the skyways were able to follow holographic tracks circuits between building stations that were invisible to human and alien eyes. The network ran efficiently everyday and with no faults.

            Clara appeared by the Doctor’s side and stared out the window too, “Oh, my … it’s beautiful!” The Doctor grinned, “Isn’t just? Millions of books stored in hundreds of buildings, knowledge collected from everywhere across the universe and put into a place for everyone to use.”

            “Put it like that and you could almost say it’s the perfect weapon,’ mumbled Clara. “Why would a library be a perfect weapon?” asked the Doctor softly, looking to his companion by his side. “It’s like what you said. Knowledge collected from everywhere across the universe and put into a place where everyone can use it,” replied Clara, “I remember one of my old school books had a quote in it: _knowledge is power_.”

            The Doctor looked back outside the window, thinking to himself.

            “It was a history book though, just something I happened to remember from those exhausting classes at school,” Clara turned and leaned against the corridor wall, “are you sure we’re in a library?”

            The Doctor let to a small laugh, “I know how to fly my TARDIS to the biggest library in the universe?” Clara raised her eyebrows, “If this is the Library, then you’re forgetting one of obvious things that can be found in one.”

            The Doctor looked at Clara, confused, “What do you mean?”

            “Where are all the books?”

            As much as the Doctor tried to restrain himself, he couldn’t help but to let a much louder laugh than before. “‘Where are all the books?’ That’s a good one, Clara!” The Doctor looked back at Clara, who stood arms folded with a sour look upon her face.

            “You actually meant that as a serious question?”

            “For a time traveller, you seem to miss the things staring you in the face,” Clara retorted, walking back into the large hall they had come out of, “look around, Doctor. Where are the books in a room where no books can be kept? Do you see any bookcases? I don’t see any bookcases!”

            “Well, perhaps this is a room purely for,” the Doctor paused for a second, attempting to think of a purpose for the room they were in, “um … err- photocopying!”

            It was Clara this time who burst into laughter whilst the Doctor stood scratching his head, bemused. “Then, explain to me why there is a sign over the doors that says _Reading Room 21.56, Song Tower_ ,” laughed Clara, pointing up to an obvious sign hanging just above the doors they had walking in from.

            “Wait a minute …” the Doctor walked around the large oak tables to the sidewall of the room. Turning around to Clara, he pointed at her and said, “Never judge a book by its cover, well in this case I suppose _literally_ ,” the Doctor beckoned Clara over to see what he had found.

            “This entire room is full of books, just not the ones you’re used to,” the Doctor pointed at what looked to be engravings on the wall. However, they were not engravings at all. All four walls of the hall were made up of small rectangles; they were size of a book’s spine and each one had a small knob attached to the front. Each one has the engraving, written vertically, of what looked to the name of book. The one the Doctor pointed out read _The Biography of Sir R. Williams_. Stacked up together side by side, row by row, the entire room held what looked to be protective boxes, which held the book inside. Pulling on the knob, the rectangle engraved in the wall opened like a hinged door and inside was not a book at all. Inside was a small computer hard-drive, sitting perfectly in place within the box. Ten USB sticks were plugged in the front of it, with little lights flashing on the end of each one.

            “Of course!” exclaimed the Doctor in a hushed voice, “remember how I said Galactic Species Control cleaned the entire book collection of the planet to capture any remaining unhatched Vashta Nerada?!”

            “Yeah,” replied Clara.

            “This was their solution! Absolutely brilliant!” said the Doctor, with excitement flourishing in his voice. “Nope, you’ve lost me,” sighed Clara, looking inside the compartment.

            “The Vashta Nerada hatched in the books of the Library. They called them all their forests, because books are made out of trees. Galactic Species Control came up with the solution to prevent the Vashta Nerada growing on the planet ever again, but removing the one thing they thrived on – their forests. They’ve set up the entire library with millions of hard-drives, which I assume are connected to the Library’s computer core. Each book, I suppose, have ten connections in form of USBs –”

            “USBs?! On another planet?!” cried Clara, pulling out one of the little devices flashing in the box. “Yep! Little bit of human technology can come a long way!” cheered the Doctor, “the books can ‘rented out’ multiple times at once, allowing more people to read them rather than having to wait for the single hardcover itself to be returned back. Ingenius!”

            “So if this is the book,” Clara pointed at the USB in his hand, “how am I supposed to read it?” The Doctor opened his mouth to answer and closed it again, “Hmm, they must have some sort of book readers available for visitors in the Library. Let’s go find one.”

            The Doctor and Clara walked out of the large hall and out into the corridor. They turned left and at the end of the walkway found an elevator area with four metallic doors and a nearby entrance to a stairwell. Next to the stairs were two massive numbers painted on the wall: **_21_**. Pulling out his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor aimed it at the elevator button and the end lit green. Suddenly, every single elevator door opened at once. “I- I didn’t mean to open all of them,” stuttered the Doctor, his eyes rapidly moving left and right.

            “You take the elevator, I’ll take the stairs,” said Clara, patting the Doctor on the shoulder. “We’re on the twenty-first floor!” cried the Time Lord, putting his sonic back into the jacket. Clara smiled, “I live in an apartment block, Doctor. I’m used to lots of stairs.”

            “Alright then, if there’s any trouble-” started the Doctor.

            “Trouble? We’re in a library! What’s the worst that could happen?” Clara interjected, her voice echoed down the stairways.

            The Doctor stepped in the elevator as the doors closed in front of him, “You’d be surprised.”

 

            


	3. Crack In The Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

****

**CHAPTER THREE**

**CRACK IN THE SNOW**

  
_Ding._

The elevator doors opened to a magnificent lobby. The walls and floor of the room were made entirely out of polished wood, similar to the hall the TARDIS materialised in. The sun shone through the large glass dome above, lighting the room beautifully. The Doctor stepped out and admired the atrium in full. There were desks with computers built into them; and televisions had been installed in areas of the room, showing the latest releases on biographies and news from other capitals across the globe.

            As the Doctor scanned the vicinity, his eyes found the Concierge Desk – the place where a visitor would mostly likely go to hire a library book reader. Walking towards it, he glanced around and noticed something very odd. There were no people anywhere. Vashta Nerada wouldn’t kill an entire room and leave nothing behind. They were scavengers to the point where they’d stuff their faces before cleaning up after themselves. No, the Doctor could sense there was something strange going on but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

            Reaching the desk, he stood by waiting for someone – anyone – to suddenly appear behind it. No one did. The Doctor tapped the courtesy bell twice, used for when needing assistance if the desk was unattended. Still, no one arrived. “Jumping the desk, it is then,” muttered the Doctor. Placing his hand on the counter, he leapt over and landed perfectly on the other side. On this side of the desk were computer monitors, open diaries and calendars, and pens and papers cluttered across the workbench. The Doctor examined the clutter before him. The desk looked like it was in use, like the concierge attendant was there minutes ago. The Doctor looked around the lobby again. It was like everyone that was in the lobby had vanished completely, without a trace left behind them. It almost looked as if the lobby was left completely abandoned-

            _Abandoned._

The word rung in the Doctor’s head like church bells as he attempted to make sense of what was going on. _Why would someone abandon a concierge desk in the middle of the day_ , he thought. Glancing around the workplace, the Doctor looked for some sort of book reader that would allow a person to read one of the USBs that he and Clara had found upstairs.

            A filing cabinet compartment was slightly open, next to the open diaries and calendars on the desk. Opening it further, the Doctor found handbooks littered inside. The Doctor gulped as he read what the handbooks were for.

            The booklets contained lockdown procedures and emergency evacuation methods of the Library.  One book was left open on the page of actions when dealing with armed and hostile fugitives.

            _Someone armed and hostile was currently in the Library._

The next drawer down in the filing cabinet was labelled “Electronic Book Readers”. The Doctor opened the drawer and found a collection of portable tablets, the Library logo slowly spinning on the screen. The Doctor snatched one out and closed the drawer. As he got up, something caught his eye on one of the computer monitors mounted on the desk. This particular screen featured nine different security camera views, in a three by three layout, showing surveillance around the Lobby area and upper levels. The Doctor had seen something, a flicker of some sort, something that was quick enough to spot in the corner of his eye. The screen suddenly went grainy and switched off completely, the back of the monitor buzzing slightly. The Doctor crouched down below the workbench and found the computer tower humming below. Turning it around slightly, the Doctor noticed the monitor connection had fallen out. Pressing it back into the place, he glanced up at the monitor. It was then that the colour in the Doctor’s face drained away, when he saw what had appeared on screen. _Not here,_ thought the Doctor, his eyes as wide as golf balls, _not now, not again!_

            Snow had appeared on the computer screen, similar to a television screen losing channel reception, but the Doctor could see the sharp outline of something he had wished he would never see again. A deep, thick crack appeared within the snow on the computer screen – a crack in the clear form of the Cracks In Time, the result from his exploding TARDIS back on Amy Pond’s wedding day. But he rebooted the universe, closed the cracks and saved everyone – so why would it be appearing in the Library on a computer screen? “Clara! Clara, we have to get out of here!” called the Doctor, looking over the desk. Clara was nowhere to be seen. “Clara!” cried the Doctor.

            Tucking the book reader inside his jacket, the Doctor leapt back over the Concierge Desk and headed straight for the stairwell. _Why did she have to take the stairwell_ , thought the Doctor. The Doctor was metres away from the doorway and shouted at the top of his voice, “Clara, if you’ve lived in an apartment block for so long, surely it can’t take you that long to reach the bottom floor-”

            As soon as the Doctor put his foot over the threshold of the stairwell, an incredible force hit his body. He felt an impenetrable wall blocking his way, blocking his way up the stairs. And then something happened he didn’t expect. Within seconds, the Doctor was thrown twenty metres across the lobby, landing with a loud bang on the opposite side of the room. An ear-piercing tone rang in the Doctor’s ears, as he lay on the floor unmoving.

            _What the hell just happened!_

The Doctor grunted slightly as he opened his eyes. His vision was completely blurred and the high-pitched whistle ringing in his ear was slowly giving him a headache. Every muscle now ached in pain as he moved slightly to check all his limbs were still attached to his body.

            _A forcefield? A forcefield across a stairwell door!_

The Doctor blinked as a bushy blonde cloud appeared above him. “Get up, sweetie!” a muffled voice called, “hurry up and move!”

            The voice was familiar somehow, a voice he’d heard before a long time before. “Sweetie, if I have kick you, not even the laws of marriage will-”

            “Quick, sir, get up!” a new voice appeared, muffled like the other one, “hurry, sir, they’ll be here any minute!”

            The Doctor groaned and he bent his knee upwards. “Sir, please don’t make me have to drag you!” the voice continued, pleading somewhere by his side. It was a child’s voice, a little boy’s voice begging for the Doctor to get up.

            “I’m sorry, sir, but they’re about to find us!”

            Two small hands grabbed the Doctor’s ankles and suddenly, his whole body began moving slowly along the floor. The Doctor’s eyes were still clouded as the sunbeams changed directions through the glass dome above him.  A minute or so pass and the Doctor’s came to a halt as the blurred figure of the young boy hurried past the Doctor’s side and vanished.

            The ringing finally disappeared and the Doctor could hear the young boy’s anxious breaths.

            “W-Who are you?” muttered the Doctor.

            “Shh, sir, please!”

            “Where’s Clara?” called the Doctor, a little louder than before.

            “Shhh! Be quiet, or they’ll hear us, sir! You need to be absolutely silent!” the young boy pleaded.

            “Hear us? Who’ll hear us?” asked the Doctor.

            The Doctor’s vision finally sharpened as he slowly rolled over to see a young boy in denim jeans and wearing a blue and white long-sleeve shirt. He had dragged the Doctor behind the Concierge Desk and was peering over the top, watching the elevators across the room. He turned to the Doctor and stared him in eyes. The Doctor immediately realised there was something wrong. The boy’s eyes were filled with pure terror and fright.

            “Who’s coming, son?” whispered the Doctor, his sense finally recoving from the forcefield blast.

            The young boy uttered two words, “The Librarians.”


	4. Child's Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

**CHAPTER FOUR**

**CHILD’S PLAY**

  
The Doctor slowly shifted across the wooden floors, and knelt on his knees to peer over the Concierge Desk. The lobby remained empty, however the young boy next to him kept his eyes fixed on the elevator doors and stairwell entry.

            “Get down, right now,” warned the Doctor, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and crouching back down below the. “Sir, I must insist-” started the boy, but the Doctor put his sonic screwdriver to his lips. “Stay absolutely silent. You said Librarians, correct?” whispered the Doctor. The little boy nodded, sitting back down behind the desk. “How do you know they are coming?” asked the Doctor, looking around the room. “The televisions, Doctor! Look at them all! It happens every time when they are about to arrive!” explained the young boy. The Doctor peeked over the top of the counter and observed the televisions mounted across the atrium. Every screen featured the snow that he had caught on the computer monitor earlier, however the crack had nowhere to be seen.

            “They’re broadcasting some sort of disruption feed across the monitors,” the Doctor mumbled to himself, squinting to see at the far side of the room, “something or someone’s blocking the visual transmission to all of these screens.”

            _Ding._

The Doctor dropped below the desk and covered his mouth. He looked from the young boy next to him, to his hand, and back again to indicate he should do the same. The boy nodded and covered his mouth.

            Absolute silence fell across the room except for the sound of shoes slowly stepping across the lobby floor.

            _The Librarian had left the elevator and was standing in the room_.

            “You’ve met them before, having you?” the little boy said, his voice barely louder than the sound of his breath. The Doctor slowly nodded and whispered, “Centuries ago.”

            The footsteps suddenly stopped and the Doctor turned to the boy next to him and closed his eyes.

*

            Clara jumped down the steps of Level Three and came to a sudden halt. At the bottom of Level Two was a little boy wearing denim jeans and a blue-white, long sleeve shirt. “Hello, there! What’s your name?” piped Clara happily.

            The young boy turned around to face Clara, “Please, don’t scream,” the little child placed his hands together and slowly took them apart. A red, buzzing bar of energy that looked like lightning zapped away between his hands as the boy widened the distance. Clara’s eyes widened in disbelief as the boy’s hands zapped and buzzed red-lightning from palm to palm.

            “W-What is that?” Clara gulped, gripping the railing hard. Any second now she was going to take off back up the stairs. The boy looked up at Clara, this time his eyes were glowing red with little numbers flickering across his pupils. A red beam pierce out from the boy’s hands, exactly like a barcode scanner, and quickly swiped Clara top-to-bottom. “Clara Oswald, age twenty-five, born in Lancashire, England. Current occupation: teacher, current residence: the TARDIS-”

            The boy’s head shuddered slightly and look to have been having a glitch. “T-TARDIS. Reviewing information – TARDIS in association to Time War. Time Lord in premise.” Suddenly, the little boy’s hands generated a sonic pulse. Clara was thrown up the staircase and slammed into the concrete wall of the stairwell before collapsing in a heap. Somewhere down below, there was loud bang and a man let out a yelp of fright, his voice slowly fading away from the echoing shaft. The little boy disappeared down the stairwell.

            Clara remained still. She’d never felt a force like that before. It was like running at eighty miles an hour and suddenly slamming into a brick wall. Slowly, opening her eyes, a fuzzy blonde cloud appearing in front of her and a soft voice spoke to her.

            “Don’t move, Clara. Remain absolutely still. The Child has gone. I’m trying to hack the system but the only thing I can do at the moment is shut down all televisions and monitor connections. When your senses have stabilised, get out of the stairwell and take the elevator from Level Three down to the lobby. The Doctor is down there – he can figure out what is going on.”

            Clara closed her eyes and opened them again while slowly nodding. The blonde cloud that was once in front of her eyes had vanished and all that was left was a blurry outline of the shaft she was lying in.

            Slowly, sitting up, Clara cringed in agony as she attempted to push herself up against the wall. Every bone and muscle screamed in pain as she slowly got to her feet. Walked down the steps one at a time, she pushed open the door to Level Three. She noticed the doorway had a sign hanging over it, reading _The Pandorica Collections._ The corridor she walked into was an almost replica of the corridor back up on Level Twenty-One. She found the elevators, and pressed the ‘Down’ button. A minute or so past and Clara slowly stepped into the elevator compartment and stood against the far corner, wishing every part of her body would stop aching.

            She looked up and noticed the elevator was full of mirrors. Seeing the state of her hair was just another thing she added on the list of things that went horrible that day. Brushing loose strands off her forehead, she attempted to tidy it the best she could. “The one day,” Clara mumbled, shaking her head angrily, “the one day I forget to bring my brush.”

            The elevator finally reached the atrium level and the doors slid graciously open. Clara slowly stepped out, watching every possible direction for the little boy with red glowing hands. Her shoes tapped lightly across the wooden floors as she walked further out into the lobby.

            It was quiet … _too quiet_.

            Clara closed her eyes, knowing what she was about to do might in fact give the young boy with glowing hands, her location in the building.

 

*

            “Doctor!”

            The Doctor suddenly jumped to his feet to see Clara, standing in the middle of the lobby. Her hair was a mess, thought it looked like she had attempted to fix it, and she looked like she was hurt in some way. “Clara!” he called.

            Running out from the behind the Concierge Desk, the Doctor dashed to meet his companion, giving her a hug of relief. “You’re okay! Oh, my. Are you all right? What happened?”

            “Blasted up a set of stairs and thrown against a brick wall,” Clara muttered, “messed up my hair for the day.” The Doctor chuckled, “I can see that. Here you go,” he pulled out a small brush from within his jacket and passed it on to Clara. “I had no idea he was going do what he was going to do,” continued Clara, as she brushed her hair thoroughly.

            “He?” asked the Doctor, suddenly becoming very alert.

            “I was walking down the stair on Level Three and there was little boy at the bottom. He just turns around, puts his palms together and creates this red lightning bar-thing of energy between his hands,” Clara explained, handing the brush back over, “and then he throws me back up the stairs and up against the wall.”

            Before Clara could continue, the Doctor suddenly turned around and stood in front of her in a protective way. He whispered quietly, “Don’t move a muscle.”

            A shrill of laughter echoed from behind the Concierge Desk as the young boy stepped out in front of them. “Oh, my god,” Clara covered her mouth. The boy’s face was the one of a manic; the wide grin plastered across his face changed his entire appearance.

            “What happened to you?” called the Doctor. “A Time War does things to you, Doctor. But you wouldn’t know, because you weren’t there,” the boy chirped, as he placed his hands together. “Fought on the front line, thank you very much,” the Doctor retorted, his hands turning into fists, “what’s this then, got a bit sick of true form, huh?”

            The boy laughed loudly again, opening his hands wide as a red bar of electrical energy connected them both, “It was the only way I could protect myself against the Time Winds. Kind of fits the title your lot gave me, does it not?”

            “Doctor, what’s he talking about?”

            “Hello there, Clara Oswin Oswald. Are you still the Junior Entertainment Manager of Starship Alaska, or are you teaching at that boring school you work at?” chirped the little boy, “or better yet, are you still the Governess slash Barmaid of the Victorian Era? So many timelines, I can’t imagine how busy you must be!”

            “Doctor, what’s he going on about?”

            “He read you,” replied the Doctor, “back in the stairwell, read your timelines – all your timelines. With the amount of paradoxes you created after jumping into my timestream, nearly overloaded his memory banks – created a sonic pulse, blasting you up the staircase and throwing me across this lobby just as I was heading over the threshold.”

            “But, I don’t remember most of that,” stuttered Clara, shaking her head.

            “And best not to, love,” chucked the boy, “Don’t want to do a Donna Noble.”

            The Doctor stepped forward, his lip quivering with anger.

            “Oooh, that struck a nerve,” giggled the child.

            “What happened to your Librarians, the ones you enslaved to rewrite people’s timelines, or are you getting your hands dirty now?” the Doctor snarled, his two fists fusing as one behind his back.

            “Didn’t survive the trip, unfortunately, but this planet has a population of a few thousand so I’m sure they’ll do fine as the next generation of Librarians,” mused the child, twiddling his fingers.

            “Doctor,” Clara’s quiet voice spoke from behind the Time Lord.

            “Who’s this? I’m assuming that’s your question. The electrical reading beam gave it away,” replied the Doctor, “this, Clara, is the abomination that gate-crashed the Time War. Chose no side and decided to help both armies slaughter each other. No idea how you could possibly be alive, let alone managing to escape the crossfire from all the Dalek ships surrounding Gallifrey.”

            “Don’t you hate that there’s a victor of the Time War, Doctor,” sniggered the boy.

            “Clara, this filth in front of us,” sneered the Doctor, pointing at the little boy who had pulled the same horrifying smile as before, “is, what Time Lord called during the Time War, the Nightmare Child.”

 


	5. Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

**CHAPTER FIVE**

**INTERROGATION**

  
A deep silence filled the lobby.

            “The Nightmare Child?” repeated Clara, pointing at the young boy next to the Concierge Desk, “but that’s just a little kid!” The Doctor slowly shook his head, “He’s like a book. The physical form of him that we can see is just the cover. What did I say earlier, back in the hall?”

            “ _Never judge a book by its cover_ ,” Clara whispered, her hands trembling slightly, “what is he going to do to us?”

            “I’m surprised you haven’t noticed, Doctor,” giggled the Child, “back up on Level Twenty-One. Why did all the elevators open?”

            The Doctor tilted his head to the side, watching the Nightmare Child smirk cunningly. The Doctor spoke softly, “Of course.”

            “Doctor, explain,” said Clara.

            “Yes, Doctor,” the Nightmare Child mimicked, “explain!”

“He rewrites timelines, Clara,” the Doctor began, “once he or his Librarians scan a subject, they manipulate and alter their timeline, future or past,” he paused briefly, gathering his thoughts, “and he’s already done it to you.”

            Clara stared at the Doctor, taken aback by what he just said, “What are you talking about? My timeline hasn’t been altered!”

The Doctor turned to Clara, his big sad eyes staring into hers. “How would you know your timeline has changed when you haven’t lived what could have happened if he didn’t rewrite it.”

“But I don’t understand!”

“He scanned you in the stairwell,” the Doctor continued, “and he interfered with your earlier timeline to ensure you would meet him down at Level Two. Remember how you chose to go down the staircase up on Level Twenty-One, instead of the elevator?”

            Clara frowned and replied, “No, he didn’t. I chose to go down there.”

            “Chose or forced to,” the Doctor interjected, “every elevator door opened, an error on my behalf, but you could have taken another elevator down. Instead, you chose to walk down the steps anyway.” Clara shook her head, “Because I live in an apartment block!”

            Clara stormed off, and disappeared past the stairwell doorway.

            The Nightmare Child let out a shrill laugh, pointing at the Doctor, “Look at your face! Tell you what, that played out just as I thought it would have in my head; Clara believing the timeline alteration of taking the stairs because she always has to take the stairs to go to and from her apartment. Perfect lie-wrapped-in-the-truth, don’t you think?”

            The Doctor stared at the Child, rage flowing through his two pounding hearts, “What do you want? Why are you back?”

            The little boy hoisted himself up onto the Concierge Desk, “I got bored of the Time War, Doctor. It was like watching the two, most-popular girls of the universe having a fist fight because only one was could be the Homecoming Queen.”

            “People died,” snarled the Doctor, his face reddening.

            “No, Doctor. The two girls realised just how alike they were, stopping at nothing to accept the truth,” snapped the Child, his eyes flashing red and his smile vanishing to a cold scowl, “seal the room!”

            The lobby dome suddenly began extending a metal plate across the outside, until the entire hemisphere was sealed across. The elevator doors deadlocked themselves and soon, the Doctor heard a parading of feet.

            He turned around and saw three lines of humans with a metal band across their eyes. They were marching across the lobby towards the Concierge Desk. There were at least a hundred in each line.

            “The next generation of Librarians. Like it?” smiled the Child, hopping off the desk and folding his arms. “Oh, my god. This was the population of the planet, wasn’t it?”

            “Some of it. Some are still being, could you say, catalogued. Others couldn’t handle the procedure and died within minutes,” the Nightmare Child mused, stepping towards the Doctor, “now, I need information, Doctor, and you will tell me what I want to hear.”

            Two of the Librarians appeared by the Time Lord’s side and gripped his arms in a firm hold. “Now,” said the little boy, clearing his throat, “shall we begin?”

*

            Clara marched up the staircase, her eyes reddening after wiping droplets of tears out of her eyelashes. How could someone have changed her timeline without her knowing? How could she have not realised she hates taking the stairs, because she has to walk up so many to get to the her apartment level. She sighed out loud when she realised she had chosen to run up the stairs instead of taking the elevator when she stormed away from the Doctor. She had to get away as quick as possible. She couldn’t stand being in the room any longer so the decision to take the stairs seemed much more efficient rather than waiting for the elevator, at the time.

            As she got to the next landing, she glanced to see what level she had made it to. Two large numbers were plastered on the wall in front of her. **_19_**. Closing her eyes, Clara breathed in deeply and exhaled the air from her lungs when –

            “ _Clara!_ ”

            A soft voice echoed around the stairwell as Clara opened her eyes wide, trying to find the source of the noise. “Who’s there?” whispered Clara, a flush of adrenaline spreading through her body, “hello?”

            Silence fell on Level Nineteen until –

            “ _Get to the TARDIS right now!_ ”

            Clara gulped and raced up to the staircases, until she finally reached Level Twenty-One. She walked up to the doors of the hall the TARDIS was parked in when a bloody-curdling thought hit her.

            _Is this a trap?_

            Clara came to a halt at the edge of the threshold of Reading Room 21.56. “Inside now,” a woman’s voice came past Clara’s ear as a figure in a white dress walked past her. She pushed open the doors and her large, bushy-blonde hair disappeared inside. Clara followed, “Hey! I know you!”

            The woman had reached the TARDIS doors and slowly turned around. Her hair curled extravagantly from her head, in very possible direction. She smiled and whispered, “Hello Clara, it’s good to see you again.”

            Clara smirked and jogged into the hall, following the woman into the TARDIS. “You’re that woman. From the conference call, aren’t you? I’m sorry, my memory from back then-”

            “Don’t be sorry, Clara, you jumped into the Doctor’s timestream and ripped yourself apart across time and space. You saved his life, but in turn, lost your memory because of all your echoes that lived across his timeline,” the woman said, pressing buttons and pulling levers on the TARDIS console.

            “I – I can’t remember your name,” Clara choked, looking away from the Console platform.

            “Clara, my name is River Song,” the woman replied, “I’m the reason you and the Doctor arrived here on this planet and I’m the reason you both could most likely die. We need to get some re-enforcements.”

            Throwing down a lever, Clara and River took off in the TARDIS as the police box slowly disappeared from the hall.

*

            The Nightmare Child opened his hands and created a red force field around the Doctor. The Librarian’s held onto his arms in with a tighter grip, as the Doctor let out a cry of agony.

            “The more you attempt to move, Doctor,” the Child sniggered, “the more the force field electrocutes you. I need information, Doctor.”

            “Information on what?!”

            “Time Lords.”

            The Doctor’s face became very still and unmoving, “What information?”

            “About _The Plan_.”

            “You’ve been in the Time War longer than I have,” the Doctor moaned, moving his leg slightly. A thin streak of electricity hit his thigh, causing the Doctor let out a scream, “How would I know anything about a Plan?”

            “Because you’re one of them,” growled the Child, his ugly features appearing slowly on his face, “when I came into the Library, my memory of what happened at the end of the Time War was erased. I knew who and what I was, where I came from and what I did on the battlefield on Arcadia’s Western Front-Line. But everything from the most recent past has been wiped. I only remember one sentence that was uttered from the mouth of a dying Time Lord who was left behind in the blood-soaked battlefield.”

            “And what did he say?” asked the Doctor, filling pricks of energy stabbing his cheeks.

            “’The Time Lord’s Plan has worked’,” the Nightmare Child replied, standing millimetres from the front of the force field.

            “What, you think I know what he meant? You really are a complete moron,” laughed the Doctor.

            The little boy’s lips curled and he sent an electric charge through the force field. The Doctor’s scream echoed across the lobby. The Nightmare Child stepped back and smiled, “Mock me again, Time Lord, and it’ll be your second heart that stops.”

            The Doctor breathed slowly, feeling only one side of his chest pounding. _His other heart wasn’t beating!_

“Now, you will tell me all that you know.”

            “I don’t know anything! I wasn’t there!”

            “But you were, Doctor.”

            “I saved Gallifrey. Locked it away in a pocket universe so the Daleks wouldn’t wipe out the planet!” the Doctor cried, “I stopped the Time War, but I have absolutely no idea what happened in that universe.”

            “You think _you_ stopped the Time War?” the Child suddenly turned around and stared at the Doctor, his red eyes glowing brightly. “I was on Gallifrey when the sky lit up brighter than an exploding sun. I was on Gallifrey when you threw us all into an empty universe and locked the doors behind it.”

            “You’re lying,” muttered the Doctor.

            “Like you said, Doctor, you weren’t there.”

            The little boy scoffed and turned away, “You throw a planet, hosting the biggest war anyone could have imagined, into an isolated universe and you think the participants are miraculously going to shake hands and part ways? The war raged on, Doctor, for those of us who were on the planet. With no connections to local galaxies, no military support or resources to restock, it was a fight till the last man standing.”

            “I – I didn’t know,” uttered the Doctor, closing his eyes in despair.

            “No you didn’t. And yet, you’re the one who got out unscathed. The Time-Lords are enraged, Doctor. They broadcasted a message from the ruins of the Glass Citadel across the planet and universe, over and over again. Do you want to know what it said?”

            The Child turned around, his eye twitching in fury. The Doctor looked up, a tear slowly falling down his cheek.

            “The Doctor, who killed us all.”

            The Doctor’s eyes widened and muttered under his breath, “Doctor Who …”

            “And then,” the young boy continued, “I remember nothing. My memory erased by something.”

            “How did you get here?” asked the Doctor, “how did you get into the Library, from the pocket universe? That requires a tremendous amount of energy, impossible energy. How did you harness it?”

            “I have no idea,” replied the Nightmare Child.

            “You don’t know?” the Doctor asked, tilting his head slightly.

            “The last thing I remember was the that dying Time-Lord telling me the Plan worked,” the Nightmare Child explained, “then I woke up here, in the middle of the Library, in the form of this little boy. So, Doctor, if you’re as clever as you seem, how did I get here and what are the Time Lords planning?”

            “One question,” the Doctor mumbled.

            “Go ahead,” replied the little boy.

            “What do you know of the Cracks In Time?”


	6. Planetary Lockdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

 

**CHAPTER SIX**

**PLANETARY LOCKDOWN**   

  
The engines of the TARDIS became silent as River checked the outside cameras on the monitor.

            “No life forms in the surroundings,” said River, flicking through multiple camera feeds. She turned to Clara and handed over an earpiece. “What’s this for?” asked Clara, taking the small device from her hand. River sighed and turned back to the console. “I’m not real, Clara,” she whispered, fiddling with small knobs and buttons on the monitor screen, “I am a computer data ghost from the Library’s hard-drive at the centre of the planet. I cannot leave the TARDIS or the connection will drop out.”

            “Hang on. If you’re not real, how did you travel from the Library to here?” asked Clara, watching River closely. “I am the child of the TARDIS,” River replied, “I am the daughter of Amy and Rory Williams.”     

            “Amy …” whispered Clara, remembering back to when the Doctor regenerated in the TARDIS. He had hallucinated about a girl, a girl named _Amelia Pond_ , “the first face his face saw.”

            “Sorry?” asked River, her eyes looking back at Clara.

            “Nothing. So you can travel anywhere in the TARDIS and the Library, but you physically cannot leave it?”

            “Exactly.”

            “What do I do?” Clara asked, a surge of adrenaline filling her veins.

            “Exactly what I tell you through that earpiece,” explained River, “we’re in a utility corridor leading to the Atrium of the Shadow Proclamation –”

            “What’s that?” exclaimed Clara, pressing the earpiece into her left ear.

            “They’re like the Police.”

            “A Intergalactic Police squad?” Clara chuckled sarcastically.

            “Exactly. Now, hurry, go outside and follow my instructions,” ordered River. Clara walked to the police box doors, took a deep breath and pulled the handles. The doors squeaked open and Clara stepped out. The TARDIS was parked at the end of corridor made entirely out of metal. In the corner next to TARDIS was a mop in a yellow bucket and broom.

            “Testing one, two, three,” River’s voice crackled through Clara’s earpiece. “Yeah, I can hear you … wait, can you hear me?” Clara noticed she had no microphone. “Yes,” River’s voice answered, “the earpiece has an invisible audio field of twenty metres around you.

            “Alright, where do I go?”

            “The TARDIS has old blueprint maps somewhere in its database. Give me a second,” River voice faded and a number of clicks and beeps came through the earpiece.

            The corridor ahead of Clara was eerily quiet. She gulped and felt the chill flow down her neck. “Okay, got it! Had to download an update for the TARDIS database,” River spoke through the earpiece, “you’ll want to go straight ahead and take the first right. Don’t rush or panic – any sign of it and they might think you’re an insurgent.”

            “Insurgent?!” exclaimed Clara in a hushed voice.

            “Don’t panic!” River ordered, her voice crackling through the speaker, “stay calm and walk as if you know exactly where you’re going.”

            Clara took a deep breath and continued to walk up the corridor. The walkway was lit by fluorescent bars of lights, along the bottom of the walls. Clara followed them, watching everything around her.

            “Why are we here, River? I mean, I know you said re-enforcements but why would the Shadow Proclamation want to help us?”

            “Because we’ve got the location of a criminal who is Number Two on their Most Wanted List,” River answered. Clara adjusted the earpiece, “Sorry, did you say we’ve got a criminal?”

            “The Nightmare Child, Clara,” said River ominously.

            “Right, naturally. So what’s he done that’s so bad to make it to the Most Wanted list? Oh, wait, here’s the corridor on the right,” informed Clara, turning right into the corridor. It too was another empty hallway, however the end of it opened up into what looked to be a large, brightly lit room. “Follow this passageway straight through. It’ll leave you straight into the Atrium,” River’s voice crackled through.

            “Okay. So the Nightmare Child, what did he do?” asked Clara again.

            “Violated countless laws against the Shadow Proclamation and has never been punished for it,” River replied bluntly. “Surely there must be more to it than that, to be named the second Most Wanted Criminal?” retorted Clara, pressing for more information.

            “Well, this is what the database says. When the Time War first started, the Shadow Proclamation could not stop the initial wave of conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks,” River explained, “instead, they established a number of laws and regulations to contain the armies involved, stopping the local species and races around Gallifrey declaring war too. One of those laws was that no life-forms, other than the armies currently involved, would be allowed the join in. The Sontarans were infuriated the most by this rule, because they love a good bloodbath.

            “However, the Nightmare Child and his Librarians broke through the Time Lock placed around Gallifrey. It’s assumed they got through by manipulating Dalek and Time Lord timelines in order to place themselves on the planet before the Lock was set in place. They dismantled it from the inside and the Nightmare Child got through, wreaking havoc in his wake.

            “Because the timelines were so damaged in the War, the Nightmare Child created the Paradox Army. The Time Lords called it the Could-Have-Been King and his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. The army was a corrupt collection of what could have been future versions of Time Lords, who had died in the first wave of attack. The Child used the mangled timelines to create an impossible army, an army whom couldn’t be stopped because they were technically already dead.”

            “That’s terrible,” whispered Clara, eyes wide in horror of the story she had just heard.

            “The only thing the Time Lords could do was to line the dead bodies of the soldiers who had died in a complete, unbroken circle around Arcadia. The Paradox Army were unable to cross it, because –”

            “They were already dead,” muttered Clara, a tear falling down her cheek, “okay, I’m in the Atrium.”

            The room was magnificent and the height of it made Clara gasp. The walls were made out of crystals with beams of light shining through from the top, lighting the room with incredible rainbows. The atrium roof had to be at least eighty metres high.

            “Alright, remember to not stand around suspiciously. Pretend you know what you’re doing and where you’re going. Head to the Inquiries Desk and –”

            “River, we have a problem,” Clara injected, her voice becoming shaky and worried, “why are there twenty rhinos in space suits heading towards me?”

            In all directions, rhinos in spacesuits appeared from nowhere, heading exactly to where Clara was standing. Clara was frozen on the spot, attempting to think about how River was going to try and get her about of this.

River’s voice immediately became firm and crispy, “Repeat these words as I say them.”

Clara gulps and as River spoke through the earpiece, Clara echoed the message aloud, “The planet called the Library has been taken under control by criminal forces. I am here to inform to you the situation that has arisen, who is involved and a plea for your assistance to capture those responsible in the –”

Clara’s earpiece suddenly crackled and went silent. River’s voice had disappeared.

The rhinos formed a semi-circle around Clara. One of them raised its wristband to its mouth and spoke in a deep, commanding voice that Clara heard, surprisingly, in plain English.

“Communication signal to external earpiece device intercepted. Judoon Troops will now take female human into custody for treason and security violation.”

“Wait!” Clara yelled across the Atrium, raising her hands up in the air, “please, listen!” The Judoon Troops moved completely in sync towards Clara, “Human will be incarcerated immediately.”

Clara closed her eyes and yelled louder than before, her voice reverberating off the crystal walls, “I know where the Nightmare Child is!”

The Judoon stopped at once, staring at Clara with one metre between them. The rhino directly in front of Clara spoke loudly, “Do not move, human,” and then turned to another Judoon, “Summon the Shadow Architect immediately.”        

Two Judoons marched away as the centre rhino turned back to Clara, “Human, you will follow me.” Clara walked behind the Judoon as they made their way across the Atrium. Directing her to a nearby lounge and pointing to it like a robot, the Judoon ordered Clara to sit down. Without a word, Clara did so and remained quiet. The Judoon stood in front of her, arms side-by-side and stayed still.

An awkward silence filled the grand room. Clara cleared her throat and relaxed slightly. The Judoon however made no movement.

A minute or so passed and the two Judoons returned with a pale-skinned, red-eyed woman with white hair. She was tall and thin, wearing a white gown that looked too big for her.

The Shadow Architect spoke with a cold voice, “Who sent you hear?”

Clara gulped and gathered her thoughts, “R-River Song.”

The woman’s eye twitched slightly, “What is your name?”

“Clara O-Oswald. I’m a companion of - I mean, I travel with the Doctor.”

“The Doctor, you say?”

“Yes – the Doctor, he’s at the Library.”

“And he’s captured the Nightmare Child, correct?”

“Well, I’m not sure. I mean, I-I left.”

“You left?”

“Yes, with River Song. She said we needed re-enforcements.”

The Architect laughed and turned away from Clara, “Re-enforcements? The Doctor really has no idea, does he?”

Clara watched the Shadow Architect in front of her, “I’m sorry?”

“Judoon, get the shuttle ready. Prepare the Library for Planetary Lockdown,” she ordered to one of the rhinos, “Clara Oswald, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am. But I don’t think you understand the scale of the situation,” Clara replied, standing up from the lounge. “Oh, I think I do, Clara. The Nightmare Child, who is trapped in the Time War and unable to get out, has miraculously escaped and ended up in the Library. I’ve heard a lot of things from the Doctor but I have to say, this is the best message he’s passed on yet.”

“I may be a low-class human to you and your, err, Judoon friends, but I know when I’m being mocked,” snapped Clara.

“Then, if you know the Doctor as well as I do, Miss Oswald,” replied the Architect, walking across the room and grabbing a black coat from a nearly desk with a large sign above it, reading: _Inquiries Desk_ , “then you’ll know what his first rule is.”

Clara was silent for a moment.

“The Doctor lies,” the woman called as she left Atrium with the rest of the Judoon following after her.

Clara clenched her fits and turned around. Walking back, Clara walked through the same walkway she had entered the Atrium in. She turnt left into the adjoining utility corridor and spotted the TARDIS.

Clara’s mind was filled questions. Why did the Architect not take Clara seriously? Why did she laugh when Clara said River needed re-enforcements? Was there something she was missing, something staring her right in the face?

Clara reached the police box and opened the doors. River was standing inside by the console desk, her hands across his face. “Hey! They’ve gone!” Clara piped up, watching River closely by the console, “the Judoon-rhino things and the woman called the Shadow Architect have gone to put the Library in Planetary Lockdown.”

“Oh, Clara, what have I done …”

River’s voice seemed quiet and broken. Her head remained in her hands as Clara stepped up on the Console platform, “What’s wrong?”

River looked up, her face red and puffy. She had been crying.

“What’s happened?” asked Clara worrying.

River turned to the console monitor and spun it right to Clara, “The TARDIS database hadn’t been updated in years. I-I didn’t realise.”

“I don’t understand,” Clara said, looking at a bunch of files opened on the monitor.

“The Doctor hadn’t downloaded the latest updates of the Shadow Proclamation’s Database. So when I downloaded it, I read to you the updated information about the Nightmare Child.”

“You said the Nightmare Child was the Number Two Most Wanted Criminal,” replied Clara slowly, attempted to piece together what River was so upset about.

“I then looked to see whole updated Most Wanted List, and I –” River choked and shook her head.

“River, what’s going on?”

“I-I was about to tell you when the signal dropped out and I lost the earpiece connection.”

Clara pulled the earpiece out of her ear and looked from it to           River, “You were going to tell me something critically important, weren’t you?”

“Isn’t strange that a creature like the Nightmare Child, who breaks numerous amounts of laws and commits terrible crimes within the Time War, would only be Number Two on the Most Wanted List?”

Clara suddenly had a terrible thought, “River, tell me what’s going on.”

River turned to the Clara, tears streaming down her eyes, “The Doctor hadn’t come here in centuries. The last time he was here was when Earth was stolen and taken to the Medusa Cascade. He and Donna Noble arrived her and gained the help from the Shadow Architect.”

Two sentences Clara remembered from earlier floated into her thoughts: _‘But I don’t remember most of that’ … ‘And best not to, love. Don’t want to do a Donna Noble.”_

“River, if the Nightmare Child is Number Two, who is Number One?” Clara demanded, worry and anxiety pumping through her veins.

River looked up and said two words that sent chills down Clara’s spine.

“The Doctor.”

 


	7. The Green Net

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

**THE GREEN NET**

  
River lifted up the handbrake on the console as TARDIS engines became silent. Clara raced out through the TARDIS doors and realised they were in the same room they left. “Wait a second,” Clara looked at the top of the wooden doors where the small sign hung, the same sign she’d seen earlier: _Reading Room 21.56, Song Tower._ Clara turned around as River closed the police box doors behind her. “Song Tower,” Clara whispered, “it was you, wasn’t it?”

River smiled, “You have to admit, it was a nice touch. Once he deciphered the code, it gave me immediate access to control the TARDIS’s flight destination. I gave it the directions to land on the twenty-first level of the building named after me. Thought he’d get the idea, but he can never work out the simplest things even when they’re staring him right in the face.” Clara shook her head, with a small grin, “He’s so clever but when someone else is more interesting, he misses the obvious.” River watched Clara, finally realising why he had her as his companion, “I can see why he chose you, Clara.”

Clara looked up, confused by what River has said, “He called me his Impossible Girl.” River’s eyes widened, “Slap him. If anything, he’s _your_ Impossible Doctor.”

“‘Clara Oswald, the only mystery worth solving. My Impossible Girl’,” Clara said, echoing the words the Doctor had spoken months ago, “why did he choose me then?” River walked over to a nearby table and sat on the edge. “You figured it out, Clara. You figured out the connection of the room to me,” River replied, “he may be a Time Lord but you figured out the message sent to him by his wife.”

Clara stood there awkwardly, looking everywhere around the room, “well, thank you for noticing.” River stood back to her feet, “He does notice you, Clara, even if he’s not looking. You’re not just a rebound companion who is filling in because he’s lonely. He chose you not just for company but because of your cleverness. You’re the force that keeps him grounded. You’re the reason he keeps travelling. I like to think he think _he’s_ the companion. What the point in travelling time and space if you can’t share it with someone else?”

“Thank you, River,” beamed Clara, her chin quivering slightly. River smiled happily, and clapped her hands, “Now, aren’t you wondering why I brought you here?”

River pulled out a thin, black tablet from within her white dress. “How-” gasped Clara, mind-boggled at the fact there was somehow a large invisible pocket in River’s dress, “how did you fit _that_ in _there_?”

“Bigger on the inside, love.”

Clara laughed slightly, watching River fiddle with the tablet. “Snagged this off the Doctor while he was disorientated in the lobby downstairs earlier. He’s such an easy pickpocket,” River winked, pulling out a small memory stick too. Clara laughed again as River plugged the USB into the tablet.

“Come look.”

Clara walked over to River and glanced at the screen. It was white, however there was no text on the screen. “I don’t get it. What am I suppose to be looking at?” Clara asked. “The biography of my father, Clara,” River replied.

“But there’s nothing there.”

“Exactly,” River started, “all of the books in this room and in the entire Library are empty. Something or someone is absorbing all the information of the Library from the computer core. I’ve been trying to access it but all I get is black-and-white snow.”

            “Like on a television with no reception?”

            “Precisely, so if every book on the planet has vanished, that could be potentially dangerous.”

            “ _Knowledge is power_ ,” Clara whispered, remembering when the Doctor and her first arrived on the planet, “that’s a hell of a lot of information to steal, isn’t it?”

            “Information on everything that ever happened in the universe, anything that is or was recorded. That’s sounds like a recipe for starting a war. We need to tell the Doctor.

            There was crack of thunder outside, making both Clara and River jump.

“Meet me in the lobby,” River ordered and within seconds vanished, leaving Clara was left alone in the reading room. Walking briskly through the hall and out past the wooden doors, she hurried down the corridor. It was strangely darker than it was before and it wasn’t until Clara glanced out the glass windows that she realised why. The sun had turned a strange orange colour, reducing the brightness dramatically. It was like it had gone from midday to dusk.

            And then Clara saw it.

            Hundreds of thin, green beams of light snaked across the sky, each one parallel to each other, bending across the surface of the Library and heading north towards the horizon. Meanwhile, another hundred or so beams of lights stretched from the eastern side of the sky, heading west. The entire atmosphere of the planet had now been covered in an electrical net of green laser beams, crisscrossing over one another to create a square pattern across the sky. _The Planetary Lockdown has begun_ , Clara thought, _the Shadow Proclamation is here, sealing the planet off with a force field._

            Clara hurried down to the elevators and repeated clicked the ‘Down’ button. A minute passed and the metallic doors in front of her finally slid open. Rushing into the mirror-filled box, she pressed the lobby button continuously and when the doors slid shut, the elevator began its slow descent down. After a minute passed, the elevator doors creaked opened and Clara stepped out to find the Atrium empty, and the Doctor unconscious in the middle of the room. River was kneeling over him with a small electronic device pressed against his chest.

Without realising, Clara found herself running around the lobby and falling to her knees when she reached River and the Doctor. “What happened?” Clara demanded, grabbing the Time Lord’s wrist and holding it with three fingers, two on top and one underneath. “I don’t know. I got here and he was lying on the ground,” River croaked, clicking buttons on the device in her hands. Clara pressed on the Doctor’s wrist and felt a faint pulse. She then pressed her hand on the left side of his chest. _Thump thump_.

There was another crack of thunder and River looked up through the glass dome to see the green net hanging in the sky above. “Force field. The Shadow Proclamation kind,” River whispered, shaking her head in anger. Clara moved her hand to the right side and felt nothing, “One of his hearts have stopped.”

A small smirk appeared on River’s face, “I’m sorry, sweetie. But it’s why they call it tough love.” River turned her hand into a fist and slammed the side of it on the right side of his chest. The Doctor groaned loudly, his eyes flickering open, “Wha – where … Where is he?!”

“The room’s empty, love. He’s gone.”

He looked at River and then noticed above her head the thin, green force field in the atmosphere of the Library. The Doctor sat up and slowly got to his feet, still looking at the green beams of light crisscrossing in the darkened sky, “We have a problem, I assume.”

“A rather big one, sweetie.”

The Doctor turned to River, “That’s the Green Net of the Shadow Proclamation, River,” his voice got louder as he went on, “why is the Shadow Proclamation here?”

“Sweetie, keep your voice down or they’ll find us quicker.”

“Find us, hey? Find you is what you mean, right? What have you done now to tick off the Proclamation?”

Clara interjected, “Doctor, shut up and listen.”

The Doctor turned to Clara, slightly offended. “It’s you they want,” Clara continued, “they don’t want River. In fact, they don’t know she’s here.”

“And why would they want me?” the Doctor whispered, looking back at River’s worried face. Clara couldn’t stop herself and blurted out the truth, “Because we went to the Shadow Proclamation, asking for help to try and capture the Nightmare Child, but River downloaded the new database update too late and realised that the Nightmare Child had moved down to Number Two on the Most Wanted List.”

There was silence. After a few seconds, the Doctor opened his mouth, “and the first is –”

“You,” River cut him off, gulping anxiously.

There was more silence.

“It would have been unavoidable,” the Doctor finally said.

“I’m sorry?” Clara replied.

“It would have been unavoidable because I was going to message the Shadow Proclamation just after you went off, Clara,” explained the Doctor, “but I got into a pickle with the Child. He obviously saw the Green Net through the glass dome and stunned me. I assume he’s gone to speed up the process of new Librarian army.”

“But there’s something else, Doctor,” Clara said.

“Mm?” the Doctor looked to Clara. She nodded to River.

“I got you both into this mess. I called you. I sent the message to Clara’s phone that bought you both here,” River began, “every book on the planet has gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” the Doctor laughed, shaking his head in amusement, “this is the world’s biggest library!” River tilted her hand in frustration and continued, “Every single piece of information has vanished from the computer core. It’s all gone, without a single trace.”

The Doctor suddenly became quiet and stared into space. “Doctor?” interrupted Clara, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “The one thing that links these two things together,” he whispered.

“Pardon?” River said, with confusion in her voice.

“Oh, but THAT’S IT!” cried the Doctor, jumping backwards with his hands on his head, “of course!”

“Hey, HEY!” exclaimed Clara, pointing at both River and herself, “explain please!” The new lines on the Doctor’s new face deepened as he realised what was going on, “The Nightmare Child suddenly appears in the biggest library in the universe out of thin air and all the information contained within the computer data core vanishes – putting it together is like a –”

“Transfer,” Clara answered, looking between River and the Doctor.

“Exactly!”

“But where did the Nightmare Child come from, and where’s all the information?” asked River.

“I noticed something earlier. I didn’t understand why it was there and when I asked the Child about it, he had no idea.”

The Doctor walked over the Concierge Desk and spun one of the computers around to face River and Clara. The screen was full of snow.

“But that’s just black-and-white spots on a computer screen,” Clara responded, puzzled.

“I saw something different on it earlier,” the Doctor said.

“What did you see?” River asked with her eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“A Crack.”

Suddenly all the television screens around the Atrium switched on, all of them covered in snow. However, within the snow, was a gigantic noticeable Crack.

“Whoa!” River gasped.

“Seems like someone’s listening,” the Doctor said loudly, looking around the room as his taunting voice echoed throughout the lobby, “come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“But – but that was on Trenzalore,” Clara stuttered, pointing at the nearest monitor to her. “The exploding TARDIS,” the Doctor explained, “the twenty-sixth of June, 2010. The day the universe blew up.”

“But you closed them. You flew the Pandorica into the explosion and rebooted the universe,” cried River, shaking her head repeated, “oh no.”

“River, what’s wrong?” the Doctor called, walking back over to her.

River was looking at her arms, which slowly began to pixilate. “River, stay calm and breathe. What’s happening?”

River turned to the Doctor and whispered, “Save me.”

“RIVER!” the Doctor screamed.

Within seconds, River vanished into nothing.

The Doctor remained silent and still, his hand holding the air where River’s hand once was.

Suddenly, the loud voice of the Shadow Architect boomed across the city outside, “The Doctor is detected. Location: Song Tower. Lockdown the building."


	8. The Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

****

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

**THE RETURN**

  
“Doctor, what is going on?!” cried Clara, watching a new net of green lasers beginning to cover the glass dome above. “I – I don’t know,” the Doctor stuttered, shaking his head, “whoever is behind this is listening to us right now.”

            “River said something earlier when we were upstairs,” began Clara, as the Doctor paced around in small circles, “she said she had been trying to access the computer data core but all she could see was …”

            Clara stopped on the spot, staying at the television screens on the wall.

            “Saw what, Clara?” the Doctor asked.

            “Snow,” whispered Clara, slowly pointing at the black-and-white snow on the screen, “what if all the information has gone into the C         rack?”                         She turned back to the Doctor who had begun pacing again. “That’s it, Clara!” the Doctor spun on the spot, pointing at his companion, “when I first met you, Clara Oswald, you were extraordinary – smart, clever and had an encyclopaedia of knowledge in your head. But it vanished when I met you the third time in present-day London.”

            “With the Wi-fi thing, right? I made me smart or something?”

            “It awakened that knowledge, Clara, because it was already there,” the Doctor continued, “you jumped into my time-stream on Trenzalore and got ripped apart by the Time Winds, scattering copies of yourself across time and space. The Crack In Time, Clara, was embedded into timeline but my TARDIS caused it. If the Crack absorbed all the information from the Library, the same information has been flying through the Time Winds of the Vortex –”

            “With me,” Clara said softly, watching the Doctor.

            “You absorbed the information, all the information in the universe that was stored in the Library!” exclaimed the Doctor.

            “But I don’t know all of it, Doctor. I’m just me, just Clara Oswald.”

            “That’s exactly right. You absorbed the information that was flying in the Winds around you, but the majority of it wasn’t there. Someone else has taken it,” the Doctor continued, looking nervously around the lobby again.

            “Who?” asked Clara.

            “If the Library’s database went into the Crack, what if something else came out of it beforehand. I sealed the cracks by rebooting the universe, but what if someone threw something into the Vortex, ripping it open again, like breaking the stitches of a wound.”

            Clara stared paralysed by a sudden thought, “The Nightmare Child.” “He appeared out of thin area,” the Doctor replied, “remember what happened on Trenzalore, the crack in Christmas Town?”

            “Yes,” Clara said, “but nothing came through that. It was just … there.”

            “Someone ripped open the scar tissue of a Crack on Trenzalore by sending something through to our universe.”

            “But there was nothing there, Doctor! I don’t understand!” cried Clara.

            “I didn’t say it had to be physical thing, Clara. Anything from outside the universe could puncture it, anything! What was the one thing that made everyone notice Trenzalore, to make them gather above the planet and seal it off?”

            Clara gasped, “the message.”

            “A statement broadcast across all of time and space, originally from a small crack on Trenzalore and transmitted in Gallifreyian. But the Time Winds ripped it so much, only two words made it through.”

            “Doctor Who?” Clara choked, her eyes wide with terror, “but why broadcast a message through a crack?”

            A deep voice echoed across the lobby, “Because Trenzalore was only a trial.”

            Clara and Doctor spun around and saw only the emptiness of the lobby. “Who’s there? Show yourself!” the Doctor shouted.

            Two, hooded figures suddenly appeared out of thin air at the far end of the lobby and slowly began walking across the room. Both wore red cloaks that trailed along behind them. However, the most distinctive thing that caught the Doctor’s eye was the large golden armour that covered their shoulders and chest. It then rose up behind their heads to form a large semicircle with a ‘u’-shaped, cut out at the top.

            The Doctor stepped immediately in front of Clara, his height completely blocking her view. “Doctor, what’s going on?” Clara whispered. She watched him pull out his sonic screwdriver and reply, “You’ve been in my time-stream, Clara. You were on Gallifrey when I stole the TARDIS. What do those figures remind you of?”

            Clara took a peek in front of the Doctor and looked at the approaching figures. “Oh my god!” she exclaimed in a hush voice, “how?” The Doctor gulped, “The Nightmare Child told me that a dying Time Lord said to him as his last words ‘the Time Lords’ Plan has worked’,” the Doctor whispered. “What Plan?” whispered Clara, taking another peek at the figures.

            “Absolutely no idea,” the Doctor said, slowly passing a small, cylindrical device with a yellow top to Clara. Clara grabbed it and looked at it. She’d seen it before; when on Trenzalore, he had given it to her to plug into the TARDIS. When she did, the TARDIS flew Clara back home.

            “No!” Clara snapped quietly, “you’re not sending me home this time!”

            “Clara,” the Doctor whispered with a slight panic in his voice as the figures continued to walk closer, “for once in my life, I actually not lying when I say I’m not sending you home. Plug this into the TARDIS, hold on to the Console platform railing and be ready to press the orange button near the handbrake to open the doors. Click it when it starts blinking.”

            “I – I don’t believe you!” snapped Clara, blinking away the water in her eyes.

            “Don’t believe me now Clara, and you mostly likely will get us both killed. Do as I say, please! I’ll open the elevator doors with the sonic. Just hurry!” the Doctor ordered, his voice much more direct and commanding.

            Clara took a deep breath and darted across the lobby. The two figures didn’t take any notice. The elevator doors flew up and Clara raced inside. She turned to see the Doctor watching the figures get closer and closer, and as he glanced towards his companion, his eyes were slightly watery. Clara went to step out when the doors snapped shut.

            The two, hooded figures came to a halt, twenty or so metres away from the Doctor.

            “So, here we are then.”

            “It’s been a long time,” said one of the figures.

            “Well, are you going tell me how did you get out?” the Doctor said, standing tall.

            “The Time Lords’ Plan worked.”

            The Doctor’s scoffed, “And you were the masterminds behind this ‘Plan’?”

            “Yes, Doctor,” both figures unveiled their hoods, “it is I, Rassilon, and this,” the first figured pointed to the second, “is Omega.”

 

o O o

 

            Clara hurried out of the elevator when it finally reached the twenty-first level. She raced down the corridor and glanced out the window to see if anything was different. Three gigantic spaceships had landed on the surface of BioCity. From the base, rows and rows of Judoon marched out and walked through the city, each carrying huge galactic guns that Clara had never seen before. _They’re going to be here any minute,_ thought Clara nervously. Just as she turned back around to walk down the corridor, River Song appeared out of no where – blurry and pixelated.

            “C-Clara! I know how they’ve done i-it,” River exclaimed, her voice cutting out every so often, “hurry! They’re isn’t m-much time! You need to get the Doctor d-down to the Core! But b-be careful. There are Lib-brarians everywhere down h-here!”

            River disappeared again, and Clara stood on the spot for second, unsure of what to do. She regathered her thought and hurried down the corridor and back into the room that the TARDIS was parked in. She raced past the tables and hurried into the police box. Rushing down to the Console Platform, she slammed the yellow-topped cylindrical device into the console and it lit up instantly. Clara found the orange button on the other side of the dashboard, alongside the handbrake. Gripping the side of the railing and watching the button intently, she held on the TARDIS took off.

            However, it didn’t seem to stabilize like it did in the Vortex. Clara managed to pull the computer monitor around to face her and saw the doors of the Reading Room – getting closer and closer. Clara’s eyes widened when –

            _BOOM!_

The TARDIS ripped through the wooden doors and then –

            _CRASH!_

            The police box smashed through the glass windows of the corridor and suddenly began plummeting down the side of Song Tower. Switching the camera view to underneath the TARDIS, Clara screamed at the top of her lungs as the glass dome of the Atrium got closer and closer and closer. Clara closed her eyes, knowing she was not going to survive the crash.

 

o O o

 

            “It’s been you all along, hasn’t it?” the Doctor snarled, gripping his sonic tighter as he glanced over to the elevator doors that were shutting. Clara vanished from view. Rassilon smiled, his wrinkled skin stretching across his face, “Doctor, we have returned to restore balance back in the universe. We mean no harm.”

            “And why am I suppose to believe you? Last time we met, you were going to rip the Vortex apart.”

            Rassilon ignored the statement, “You changed your face, I see.”

            “Thanks to the new regeneration cycle you kindly gave me.”

            Rassilon tilted his head slightly, “I’m sorry?”

            “The Crack on Trenzalore. You gave me a new cycle of regeneration energy.”

            “As far as I’m aware, Doctor, you killed us all when you shoved into that pocket universe when we could have won against the Daleks. Why would _I_ reward _you_ for the actions you took?” Rassilon retorted, folding his arms.

            “But you must have,” the Doctor stuttered, “there’s no possible explanation.”

            “You’re clever, Doctor. You’ll think of something. Now, we believe that you need to answer for the crimes and actions you have committed,” Rassilon sneered, “and how fitting it is that the Shadow Proclamation is here to capture you. Less work for us, I think.”

            “You know that the Nightmare Child is here, right?” the Doctor replied, “if he finds you, all hell will break loose and just for the record, he has a brand new army of Librarians so I’d be a bit worried if I were you.”  
            Rassilon laughed, “How do you think we got here in the first place, Doctor? Trenzalore was the trial of the Plan. It worked; the message was broadcast into his Universe. This,” he spread his arms wide and grinning sinisterly, “is the final product. We threw the Nightmare Child through the Vortex, and he broke through the Crack here in the Library. We followed through.”

            “I’m not buying it. I don’t have time for mind games, Rassilon. There is a Judoon army about to invade this building –” the Doctor said.

            “Oh, that’s okay Doctor,” interjected the deep voice of Omega, “we’re Time Lords. We’ve got all day.” Raising a large fist, Omega moved to throw a punch at the Doctor.

            “You really don’t want to do that.”

            Omega stopped midway and stared at the Doctor, fury pumping through his body, “And why would I stop now?”

            “Because, like you said,” the Doctor snapped sarcastically, “we’re all Time Lords, but it’s me who has a TARDIS.”

            Suddenly, there was a tremendous crash above as the TARDIS fell from the glass dome and into the lobby. Glass fragments showered down and the TARDIS flew directed toward two cloaked Time Lords.

            “You can’t hide from us, Doctor,” snarled Rassilon.

            “I’m not hiding, Rassilon, I’m running.”

            The two Time Lords vanished within thin air as the TARDIS swooped down low, about thirty centimetres from the ground. The Doctor whispered to himself, “C’mon Clara, open the doors.”

            The Doctor began running towards the police box. It looked like two cars about to ram into each other. As the Doctor ran, he kept repeating the words _open_ over and over in his head.

            Twenty metres.

            _Open._

Twelve metres.

_C’mon! Open, open, OPEN!_

The TARDIS doors suddenly inwards and the Doctor caught a glimpse of Clara, flailing by the railing and screaming loudly. The Doctor grinned wide and laughed to himself.

Two metres.

            The Doctor leapt in the air and passed through the open doors. Flying through the air, he soared over the descending steps and landed on two feet in front of the console. Exhaling loudly, he glanced over at Clara and said, “You’d make a terrible astronaut.”

            “Shut up!” exclaimed Clara, standing to her feet and adjusting her blouse. “Now we know who’s behind this all!” the Doctor cried, frantically pushing buttons.

            “Doctor.”

            “Yes?”

            “River told me to tell you something.”

            The Doctor slowly turned to her, his eyes wide, “What did she say?”

            “She said you need to go to computer data code. She’s figured it all out. Everything. Why it’s all happened,” Clara explained.

            The Doctor smirked and glanced at Clara, “Fancy a trip to the centre of the planet?”

            Clara smiled, “After you.”

            


	9. Detention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

**CHAPTER NINE**

**DETENTION**

  
“Who were those people?!” Clara asked.  

“The founding fathers of Gallifrey,” replied the Doctor, clicking buttons on the console.

            “Founding fathers? Like the people who made Gallifrey 'Gallifrey',” whispered Clara is shock.

            “Yep,” retorted the Doctor.

            “But they just vanished into nothing,” stuttered Clara, attempting to piece everything together, “what’s the point of having a TARDIS if Time Lords can just disappear within thin air.”

            “Fair point.”

            “Wait, can you vanish and appear too?”

            “Of course I can’t,” laughed the Doctor, “no, they’ve done something to their bio-structure. No doubt after I locked them away, _saved them_ awayshould I say, in the pocket universe, they concocted something to rewrite their DNA …”

            “How could they do that?” asked Clara, leaning against the Console Platform railing. “A question we need to ask River. You said she had figured it out,” replied the Doctor as Clara nodded her head, “I assume her connection hologram has deteriorated because she left the Library in the TARDIS. That’s why she vanished earlier in the lobby.”

            “Probably why she was all pixelated and glitchy when I saw her upstairs too,” added Clara.

            The Doctor pulled a lever and leant again the Platform railing opposite to Clara. “I don’t understand,” he said softly to himself, “the Time Lords keep going about this ‘Plan’. All they say about it is that it worked.”

            “Ooh!” piped up Clara, an idea shooting through her head, “The bio-structure thing you said?”

            “Maybe,” muttered the Doctor, “but what would be the point of vanishing and appearing?” Clara thought for a moment and replied, “Well, it’s quicker to travel than in the TARDIS, right?”

            “You’d get ripped to sheds in the Time Winds,” responded the Doctor, pacing around the Console Platform, “they said they threw the Nightmare Child into Vortex, causing him to break through in this universe …

            “But that would mean they’d have to split the skin of the pocket universe open too, like opening the doors of an airlock. How could they have opened an entry the Time Vortex? That’s impossible. Well, not _impossible_. I mean they have the Untempered Schism. But the Nightmare Child was huge, gigantic in his true form. The little boy is his disguise. He wouldn’t have changed back into his disguise form willingly. If he broke through, the tear in the skin of universe would have to be enormous. But they’d have had to rip open the wall of the pocket universe first …”

            “Could they have detonated a TARDIS in the pocket universe?” said Clara, walking across the platform, “that’s what the Cracks are, right, Cracks in Time, exposing the Time Vortex because of the exploding TARDIS?”

            “Couldn’t have,” the Doctor replied, “all the TARDISes were destroyed in the Daleks’ first wave of attack. Cut off our potential escape into the Vortex.”

            The TARDIS engines became silent and the Doctor checked the monitor, “Strange …” The camera view from outside the TARDIS was pitch black. He tapped the side of the screen, however it did nothing.

            “Is the Library’s core usually like this?” Clara asked, glancing around at the monitor.

            “No …”

            “River did say there were Librarians everywhere down here.”

            “Clara,” the Doctor said, “there’s nothing outside.”

            “Well, obviously.”

            “No, there is _nothing_ outside. No light, no dark, no up, no down, no left, no right. We can’t be in space, there’s no stars.”

            “But,” Clara smacked the side of the screen, however it did nothing, “you’re talking like we’re in –”

            “The Void,” answered the Doctor, his voice full of worry, “this is impossible. Completely impossible.”

            “Well, you know what goes hand and hand with impossible,” said Clara, a small grin appearing on her face, “me.” Clara hurried around the Platform and up the stairs, pulling the police box doors open.

            “Clara!”

            “Whoa …”

            The Doctor walked up behind Clara and gazed through the doors. It was exactly like the monitor. It was pitch black. The area the TARDIS had landed in was a vast mass of emptiness – no light and mass, nothing of anything.

            “This isn’t the Void, Doctor,” Clara whispered, glancing around in disbelief, “this is the computer core.”

            “The Crack’s absorbed it.”

            Suddenly, the Doctor jumped out of the TARDIS and landed on what seemed to be a solid surface. He laughed loudly, “the great space of darkness. Amazing.”

            Clara could see the Doctor perfectly, staring around the spacious and eerily quiet place with a look of confusion upon his face.

            If it wasn’t the pure emptiness that made Clara uneasy, it was the booming silence that echoed around her. Not a sound, not a whisper, nothing of anything that could make a slightest amount of noise is what feared Clara the most. She had only experienced this kind of fear once before; the day her mother passed away. She arrived home from school and found her father sitting in the lounge-room of their home. He spoke not a word, not a whisper, not even a sound when Clara sat opposite him and asked him what was wrong. He was frozen, unable to process the passing of his wife and in turn, cutting himself from reality that continued on around him.

            “I don’t understand …” the Doctor whispered, waving his hand in front of his face, “no pixilation,” he just up and down twice, “perfectly solid ground with a gravity pull beneath us.”

            Clara took a step out of the TARDIS and felt for the ground. Indeed, there was an invisible surface below her feet. “Wait a minute,” whispered the Doctor, “Omega got out of the anti-matter universe. Oh, wonderful.”

            “What?” cried Clara, walking across to the Doctor.

            “Turn around,” he gasped, his left eye twitching slightly.

            Clara gulped and slowly turned on the spot.

            “Oh, no …” All she could around was darkness, except for the Doctor, “where’s the TARDIS?”

            “Good question. Perhaps it’s cloaked itself somehow.”

            “You said anti-matter universe.”

            “Yep.”

            “Anti- _matter_ , Doctor. The TARDIS is _matter_!” exclaimed Clara, running back to the spot where the TARDIS had been. She felt nothing but empty space. It was gone.

            “Oh, God,” shouted Clara, turning back to the Doctor, “we’re going to die, aren’t we?”

            “What makes you say that?”

            “Seriously?! Doctor, we’re both _matter_! Atoms and molecules bound together. We’re going to blink out of existence!”

            “No,” replied the Doctor calmly, “an anti-matter universe removes everything around a being, except the being itself. Perfect place for punishment. Time Lord schools, back on Gallifrey, used anti-matter universes as detention rooms.”

            “Great, so you’re back in detention. How the hell do we get out of here?!” snapped Clara, folding her arms.

            “I think I just found Omega’s escape door.”

            The Doctor began walking towards Clara, however focused on something behind her. Turning around, a bright light blinded her. As her eyes adjusted, the source of the light became clearer – it was a Crack, hanging in the middle of the darkness. “This is how he got out,” explained the Doctor, “he would have seen this light and without knowing what it was or where it came from, walked into it. He escaped the universe.”

            “How long was he here for?” asked Clara.

            “I don’t know … millions and millions of years, probably. The strength of this light would have been so powerful, his eyes are probably still trying to adjust,” said the Doctor, walking closer to the Crack, “he tried to punch me upstairs. Would have missed me by a mile, with the direction he was throwing.”

            Clara held her hand up against the strength of the light, “So where will this take us?”

            “Back to the Library, hopefully.”

            “Why did we end up here anyway?” asked Clara.

“All these Cracks are interconnected to the Library. Somehow, the TARDIS landed here thinking it was the computer core,” the Doctor said, “It’s strange, though. Omega runs through this Crack, he lands in the Library. The Nightmare Child somehow is thrown through another and lands in the Library. What’s so special about this planet?”

            “If we jump through this Crack, will it rip us apart?” asked Clara.

            The Doctor paused, “Assuming this was an after-shock crack of the Nightmare Child breaking through, it shouldn’t. It’ll simply act as a teleport, a link back to the Library core, possibly.”

            “Let’s find out,” Clara took the Doctor’s hand, “On three.”

            The Doctor smiled, and nodded.

            “One … two … three!”

            They jumped into the blinding light.

            _BANG!_

The emptiness of the anti-matter universe suddenly vanished and soon, the Doctor and Clara were standing in the middle of large garden with lush green grass. A footpath led from the garden to a white, old mansion with a sign posted into the ground with the letterings _C.A.L._ written on it. Walking towards them along the winding path was a woman dressed in a white, flowing dress and had blonde, fizzy hair.  

            “Hello, sweetie.”


	10. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

****

 

**CHAPTER TEN**

**SACRIFICE**

  
“So, the virtual world of C.A.L. is still stable,” the Doctor spoke, holding his hands behind his back.

            The garden around them seemed almost real. A light breeze blew across the shrubbery, the leaves shivering in its wake. The grounds were empty; no one was around.

            “Where is everyone?” asked Clara politely.

            “Gone,” answered River.

            “Gone?” echoed the Doctor, raising an eyebrow.

            “Lost, Doctor. I couldn’t save them.”

            “What do you mean you couldn’t save them? Why were they in need of saving, River?”

            “The computer database has vanished,” replied River, “I have only a matter of minutes before it begins.”

            “What’s going to begin?”

            River gulped and closed her eyes, “the Rip, Doctor.”

            “The Rip?” Clara repeated, looking between River and the Doctor.

            “Can you hear it, Clara?” asked River.  
            Clara smiled awkwardly, confused at the question, “Hear what?”

            “Doctor, can you hear it?” River directed her question onwards.

            Tilting his head slightly, he smirked sarcastically, “Hear what, my love?”

            “Twelve regenerations –” River began.

            “Thirteen, actually,” the Doctor interjected.

            River cleared her throat and continued, “Thirteen regenerations and you’ve forgotten the sound of it. It’s been hunting you, Doctor, across time and space since your Eleventh face.”

            The Doctor straightened his back and adjusted his suit, “The Crack?”

            River smiled, “You said the Nightmare Child would have ripped a gigantic hole in the fabric of reality when breaking through. I have found it, Doctor. The question is, can you hear it?”

            The Doctor glanced around, “There is nothing here.”

            “Oh, my …” Clara whispered, looking upwards. The Doctor followed her gaze and finally saw what River was talking about. High above, stretching across the entire atmosphere was an enormous Crack in Time. It glowed hot red with wisps of yellow energy sparking on the edges. It ripped across the whole sky and suddenly, a roaring rush of wind filled both the Doctor and Clara’s ears.

            “Here it is, Doctor. There’s the Crack the Nightmare Child caused and what you’re hearing is the Time Winds!”    

            “River! Why – why is it so loud?!” cried the Doctor.

            “Because the Time Vortex is colliding with another, Doctor! Give me your screwdriver!” replied River. Handing over the silver sonic, the Doctor and Clara watched as River fiddled with the settings and pointed it up at the sky. Pressing the switch, the tip lit blue and the roaring wind vanished.

            River spun the sonic in the air and caught it in one catch, “Created a super airstream in the upper atmosphere, blowing the wind away higher above. Won’t hold for very long, but it’ll do for now.” She passed the sonic back to the Doctor.

            “So all of the database been absorbed into that Crack?” asked the Doctor, putting the screwdriver back in his jacket. “Yes and no, Doctor,” replied River, “but look! Look closely! See the yellow sparks - doesn’t it look familiar?”

            “But that’s – no, it can’t be!”

            “Is that -” began Clara.

            “Regeneration energy,” answered River, nodding slowly.

            The Doctor was at a loss of words.

            “How is that possible?” asked Clara, watched the Doctor stare into space. “The Time Lords are seeping through the Cracks, Clara,” River explained, “the two Time Lords you met in the lobby are the founding fathers of Gallifrey and they’ve been the only ones to successfully make it through.”

            “That’s how they’ve been able to disappear and reappear,” whispered the Doctor.

            “Sorry?” Clara said, turning to the Doctor.

            “They’re dispersed across time and space. The majority of their bodies made it through but I’m sure bits of their molecules are still flying in the Vortex,” the Doctor answered and looked back to River, “so that regeneration energy is –”

            “Bits and pieces of Time Lords,” replied River softly, stepping closer, “Time Lords that couldn’t make it through. I’m – I’m sorry.”

            The Doctor slowly shook his head, his chin quivering slowly. He looked back up at the Crack, watching the energy flicker on the edges. He felt enraged. “They’re all dying,” whispered the Doctor, his voice breaking, “they’re being ripped apart by the Time Winds and I can’t do anything about it. I saved them and they didn’t stop and realise they were safe! Why – why don’t they ever listen?!” he looked back at River, “they said the Plan worked. This doesn’t look like a success,” he pointed at the rip in the sky.

            “The Plan did work, Doctor,” said River.

            “What is it, then?” croaked the Doctor, clearing his throat as he clenched his fists.

            “The Plan you foiled with the Master.”

            “What? The End of Time?”

            “Exactly.”

            The Doctor scoffed, “As far as I’m aware, River, we’re all still here.”

            “Don’t you remember what I said earlier?” sighed River.

            Clara tapped the Doctor’s arm, her eye wide, “The Winds, Doctor. We could hear them before because –”

            “The Time Vortex is colliding with another,” finished River.

            The Doctor became silent, “The pocket universe,” he closed his eyes and shook his head. “The Time Lords unleashed the Ultimate Sanction and ripped the pocket universe’s Vortex apart,” River explained, “they’ve become creatures of pure consciousness and are bleeding through the Cracks.”

            “But how would they have known the Cracks existed in this universe?” asked the Doctor, “it’s impossible to have a connection between a parallel universe!”

            “They had a connection, Doctor,” replied River.

            “What connection?”

            “You.”

            The Doctor shook his head with a smirk on his face, “Me?”

            “The connection is by race,” River said, “you were the Last of the Time Lords in this universe, Doctor. Their first attempt of the Plan was with the Master, remember, but it backfired – sending them not back into the Time War but back into the pocket universe along with their puppet. You are the only one left.”

            “But,” the Doctor paused, “I’m not insane like the Master. I don’t hear the Drums. What connection could I have that acts as a link to the Time Lords in the pocket universe?”

            “Doctor, you left Gallifrey many centuries ago. What did you take?”

            The Doctor closed his eyes, attempting to remember the first day he left Gallifrey, “Nothing. I took myself, my granddaughter and the TARDIS –”

            The Doctor suddenly became silent, “Oh, no …”

            “The TARDIS was the last connection between Gallifrey and the Time Lords, and they used it against you.”

            “It was them, wasn’t it?”

            “I’m afraid so.”

            “I’m missing something, aren’t I?” piped in Clara, smiling awkwardly.

            The Doctor looked round to Clara, “TARDISes are like computers connected to a server. Gallifrey is the server. All it would take would be a few lines of computer code and you could override the engines.”

            “You mean they took control of the TARDIS?” Clara said, attempting to understand the situation.

            River explained, “The Time Lords sent a message of computer code from Gallifrey to the TARDIS, authorising the engines to triple their power output. The engines couldn’t cope with the pressure and exploded. With no possible explanation as to how it erupted, the Kovarian Chapter of the Church of the Papal Mainframe took the credit.”

            “The Time Lords blew up their own creation,” scoffed the Doctor, “all to rip the universal walls down and allow the Time Vortex of the pocket universe to collide with ours.”

            “Except, sweetie, they didn’t anticipate someone to fix the Cracks,” interjected River, “they didn’t know anything about the Pandorica and its potential to reverse the Cracks.

            “When they realised the Cracks had been closed, they had no way of connecting back to the TARDIS. The explosion severed the link so the Time Lords used the only thing they had left, which was on Gallifrey itself.”

            “The Nightmare Child,” sighed the Doctor.

            “Even though the Crack here in the Library had shut, the other Cracks in the future were still closing, like a wound slowly healing across time. They tested the experiment by sending a message through the Crack on Trenzalore. It was a success; so they knew the scar tissue was still there, providing weak spots in the skin of the universe,” continued River, “they devised the Plan. By unleashing the Ultimate Sanction, they would rip the Time Vortex of the pocket universe apart and throw the Nightmare Child through the Winds and into this universe, bursting open the Crack here.”

            “Of course! That’s where the information’s gone!” cried the Doctor, slapping his forehead. “What?” asked Clara curiously. “When the Nightmare Child first appeared in the Library, he told me he had no memory of how he appeared in the Library,” the Doctor answered, “yet Rassilon and Omega knew exactly what had happened and what was going on. It was them all along – they chose this Crack specifically. They knew that once they entered the Vortex, they’d lose their memory. They absorbed the Library’s information to restore their knowledge!”

            “So Doctor, is this a bad thing, the Time Lords coming back?” asked Clara.

            The Doctor stood in silence. After a few moments, he spoke. “The War,” he mumbled, “it changed them. But the Vortex would have wiped their memories so their conscience might have reset.”

            “But we have a problem, Doctor,” River said, her hands shaking slightly, “this is how I have Time Lord DNA. Amy and Rory were in the TARDIS when I was conceived and the Time Lord energy of the dying Time Lords in the Vortex altered my genetics.”

            “Wait a second! Doctor, that’s how you got your regeneration!” cried Clara.

            “The Time Lords didn’t give me more lives,” nodded the Doctor, realising why Rassilon said he didn’t provide the new regeneration, “I absorbed the energy from the Time Vortex. The Crack on Trenzalore opened in the sky and was leaking with lost regenerations from the dying Time Lords trying to pass through.”

            “Doctor, please,” whispered River and the Doctor immediately turned around, “we have minutes before –”

            Suddenly, hundreds of metres away, Librarians and Judoon began appearing in the gardens. They spotted the trio and slowly began closing in. “River, what’s wrong? What’s the problem?” the Doctor started panicking.

            “Doctor, I am simply made of numbers here. Pieces of me are slowly disappearing into the Crack,” a small tear trickled down River’s cheek, “Information of the dying Time Lords is flowing out of the Crack, and I’ve been listening and reading.”

            “Oh, River,” the Doctor placed his hand on her cheek, “you’ve absorbed the thoughts of a thousand Time Lords. That’s how you figured it all out, isn’t it?”

            “I need to know,” smiled River, “one last time, can you … save me …” every word she spoke became glitchy and broken. “River, I …” the Doctor whispered, placing his forehead to hers, “I … don’t know.”

            “No,” Clara suddenly spoke, her eyes beginning to water, “no! Doctor, think of something – anything! You have to save her!” She glanced around the gardens; more Judoon and Librarians were approaching and the Crack above was opening wider.

            “I can’t be saved, Doctor,” smirked River, two new teardrops dropping from each eye, “I just needed to you to say it.” “Oh, River,” the Doctor’s chin quivered, his thumb stroking a tear rolling down River’s face. “It’s okay,” River said, placing her pixelating hand onto his, “if I go, the amount of information I’ve absorbed will fall back into the Crack and make it backfire. If I go, the Crack reverses and closes for good. Information is restored to the Library and the Time Lords will stop bleeding through to this planet.”

            “This is not okay!” shrieked Clara, stamping her foot on the grass, “I couldn’t save my Mum because I’m just an ordinary human. But Doctor, surely, there must be something! She’s right there in front of you – help her!”

            “I … can’t,” whispered the Doctor, “she’s absorbed too much information. She’s falling into the Crack and I have nothing to stop it from happening.”

            “No!” screamed Clara, “let’s get her to the TARDIS. We can think of something in there!”

            It was then that the Doctor’s eyes widened. It wasn’t panic; it wasn’t shock; it was revelation. He stepped away and spoke four words, “I can do it.”

            “What?” Clara said abruptly, a smile slowly stretching across her face.

            “Doctor, it’s time …” whispered River, her fizzy hair slowly fading.

            “How, how can you save her?!” cried Clara, a tear falling down her cheek. “You both were in the TARDIS, right, when you went to the Shadow Proclamation?” asked the Doctor. Clara nodded, “Yes, but River couldn’t leave the Console Room.”

            The Doctor turned around, his eyes beaming with hope, “But she could leave the Library. She’s the Child of the TARDIS, born in the Time Vortex absorbing Time Lord DNA – she’s directly linked the Heart of the TARDIS!”

            “Oh, Doctor,” said River, her face brightening in amazement, “you clever, clever man.” The Doctor laughed as Clara smiled broadly. “Well, c’mon!” she piped.

            “I just need the TARDIS. I can upload her data ghost into the database and she can live inside the TARDIS. She’ll never again be just a book on a shelf,” the Doctor grinned, “I’ll never have to say goodbye to her, because she’ll always be with me.”

            “Doctor, you can save her!” cried Clara ecstatically.

            “I can –”

            The Doctor turned around to see River raising her hand, a broad smile across her face. Her eyes poured with tears as she whispered three words and everything around them turned to black. The entire virtual world of the Library core vanished and the interior of the TARDIS appeared around Clara and the Doctor.

            “- save her.”

            The Doctor’s hand remained outstretched in mid-air, as if he was reaching to take River’s that had long since gone. A tear fell down his cheek as the thought of never seeing the woman he’d so selfishly abandoned in the Library seeped into his thoughts. Time had been against him the moment he had entered the data core, but in what he saw as infinity, he had missed his last chance to say goodbye to the woman who had changed his entire life.

           

 

            


	11. Nature Of The Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

NATURE OF THE BEAST

  
The TARDIS was silent as a mouse. Nothing moved or flickered. Clara gripped the nearby rail and held back her tears. She’d been in a situation like this before – nine years ago on the day her mother passed away.

            The Doctor remained transfixed in space, watching where River had once stood. His hand was still hanging mid-air, reaching into the emptiness before him. Clara sniffed her nose and wiped the water from her eyes. _Compose yourself,_ she thought, _stay focused and don’t cry._

            Clara took a few steps to the centre console and glanced up at the computer monitor. It was then that she felt her stomach coil. Through the computer monitor, Clara watched an army of Judoon battling hundreds of Librarians outside the TARDIS. By the looks of the background, they were back in the Atrium of Song Tower. “DOCTOR!” roared the voice of the Shadow Architect outside, “Face me and admit to the crimes you have committed! Face me or face oblivion!”

            Clara gulped. It was time to face her fear. The fear she ran away from all those years – this time, thought, it was on behalf of a friend. Clara took a deep breath and turned to the Doctor. He had lowered his arm now but was still staring into space. Clara stood in front of him and took his hand. “I know what’s going through your head,” she whispered, feeling his hand grip hers, “you feel like everything around you is moving in fast motion. You’re caught in a second of time and you don’t know how to get out.”

            The Doctor’s bottom lip quivered as he bit it hard while his eyes filled with tears. He gave a small nod. Clara reached into the Doctor’s jacket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. “Sometimes you can’t save the day, Doctor,” Clara smiled as she touched his face, “my grandma told me it’s how we grow as people. Losing someone is like learning a lesson that can’t be taught. It’s something you need to experience to understand. I experienced it and I understand it. Now, well, now I need to face it.”

            Clara smiled and walked up the steps to the front doors of the TARDIS.

            “DOCTOR!” bellowed the Shadow Architect outside, “FACE ME!”

            “Clara …” the Doctor whispered.

            “River and I bought them here, Doctor,” beamed Clara, “this time it’s not your job to stop it. Because they don’t want me – they want you.”

            Clara felt a surge of adrenalin run through her body. Rage and fury filled her every thought, “Time to fix the mistake we made.” Clara placed her hands on the police box doors and pulled them forward.

            The sounds of the battle outside filled her ears. There were bangs and groans as the Judoon and Librarians fought each other viciously. Clara took another deep breath and stepped out of the TARDIS. The Shadow Architect’s voice boomed around the Atrium, “THE DOCTOR WILL FACE ME.”

            “Perhaps I didn’t formally introduce myself,” Clara called across the lobby, “my name is Clara Oswald –”

            Clara suddenly flung the Doctor’s sonic out in front of her and pointed it down the centre of the room. As she pressed the button, she’d hoped River hadn’t had changed the settings earlier. Within seconds, a huge blast of air swept across the wooden room, blasting both Judoon and Librarians off their feet. They landed a few metres away from where they had once stood and remained motionless on the ground.

            “– Pleasure to meet your acquaintance.”

            In a wisp of grey-black smoke, the Shadow Architect appeared at the opposite end of the lobby, accompanied by three Judoon who hadn’t been in the room beforehand. “Clara Oswald, as Chief Officer of the Shadow Proclamation, I place you under arrest for treason, affiliating with a known criminal and assaulting Judoon forces. Failure to cooperate –”

            “Are you done?” snapped Clara, tilting her head sarcastically.

            “Clara Oswald, do you know who you are talking to?” retorted the Shadow Architect.

            “Yes, I do know. But I believe that a greater threat may be of your concern.”

            “ _The Doctor_ ismy concern. Step aside, Miss Oswald. You cannot defend him,” snarled the pale-skinned woman, walking graciously across the lobby floor towards her. “Don’t you understand what is going on?” Clara shouted, watching the Architect step closer toward her. She was a mere two metres away from her. “Oh, Clara,” she whispered coldly, “I know exactly what’s going on. You’re the diversion, aren’t you?”

            “What?” Clara scoffed, smirking with amusement.

            “Why else would the Doctor travel with a companion? You are simply a means to an end, which has finally come about,” the Architect hissed, stepping into Clara’s personal space. She raised her hand and gripped one side of Clara’s face with her thumb and the other with her four other fingers, squeezing tightly to the point of pain, “You are nothing, Clara. You’ve been used from the very beginning. He’s lied countless of times and never apologised or asked for forgiveness.” The Architect let go of Clara’s face and pushed her aside and she stepped towards the TARDIS.

            Clara turned around, fury and adrenalin kicking in, “Have you ever lost someone?” The Architect laughed, “Lost someone? Are you under the impression I have the ability to _feel_ , Clara?”

            “Can you?”

            There was a brief silence and the Architect turned around. Her face had turned much paler, however her eyes were as empty as a starless night. “Feelings make you weak, Clara. They feed off your thoughts and decisions and use up energy that can be used for a greater purpose –”

            “Like being a judge, juror and executioner?”

            “This is law, Miss Oswald,” sneered the Architect.

            “Answer the question.”

            “Watch your tone.”

            “Watch your back.”

            There was a deep silence. “Are you threatening me, young lady?” laughed the Architect tactlessly.

            “I am only asking for an answer. Have you ever lost someone?”

            The Architect’s eye twitched slightly, “Yes.”

            “How did it feel?”

            “I don’t feel, Miss Oswald.”

            “Everyone feels, ma’am; whether it’s for the good or for the bad,” replied Clara, “it’s the nature of the beast. Tell me, what was so bad that you decided to cut yourself off from feeling?”

            The Architect bit her lip as she squinted towards Clara, “You have no idea.” Clara glared back into the cold, dead eyes of the pale-skinned woman, “Try me. I lost my mother at sixteen. I felt every possible emotion after a loss like that.”

            “What is the point you are trying to make?” whispered the Architect, her voice small and broken. “The Doctor has just lost someone,” responded Clara, “someone who he’ll never forget. If you have lost something like that, I hope you can understand what he’s going through.”

            “Does not excuse the crimes he has committed!” cried the Architect, her confidence restoring, “Judoon! Arrest this woman!”

            “Don’t you understand what has just happened?” Clara roared as the two of the Judoon took hold of Clara’s arms.

            “Oh, believe me, I’ve heard quite enough from you.”

            “The Doctor couldn’t stop it from happening and by arresting him, he’ll never be able to save them!”

            “Judoon, halt!” the Architect raised her hand and looked from the TARDIS to Clara, “what couldn’t he stop?”

            “The reason he arrived here – the reason why I asked you to help but you refused to listen!” Clara cried, the Judoon still holding her tightly, “the Nightmare Child is here in the Library and is building an army.”

            “I’ve already captured the Child, Clara. He is currently in the deadlocked cell aboard the Judoon Ship and is in no way a threat,” snapped the Architect.

            “You have to listen to me! If the Nightmare Child is back, where do you think he came from?!”

            There was silence as the Architect watched Clara attentively.

            “Look back at your records. Where was the Nightmare Child last seen?”

            The Architect stepped back slightly, “But … but he can’t have. It is Time-Locked!” Clara nodded, “But the Doctor saved Gallifrey and locked it away in a pocket universe. What if someone used him as a catapult? Ripping a hole in the fabric of reality and breaking back into the universe, creating a passage between two worlds?”

            “What are you trying to say, Clara?” the Architect whispered, her voice unsure of what was going on.

            “They’re back, ma’am. They’re bleeding through the Cracks In Time in the future that are still closing –”

            The Architect shook her head, “No, the Doctor caused the Cracks in Time, Miss Oswald. That is the crime he has committed - the Destruction of the Universe. He blew up his TARDIS –”

            “Why on Earth would he blow up his own way of travel – his home, to be honest? No, you’ve got your facts wrong. We’ve all had our facts wrong from the very beginning,” Clara said, shoving the Judoon off her arms, “this is a much bigger plan has been in the works for a very long time and we had no idea about it. So much that it began right under our noses and we just watched it all happen and blamed on the only person who could have possibly had the resources to do it.”

            “He’s been framed,” whispered the Architect softly after a long silence, “the Doctor’s been framed.”

            “He’s the hook, line and sinker. He’s been the distraction while the real masterminds executed their return. The Doctor may have rebooted the universe and sealed the crack but the Time Lord’s are coming back, ma’am. I have only three words for you.”

            “And what would those be?”

            “Watch your back.”

            The Architect smirked and looked at the Judoon, “Return to the ship. Unseal the planet and take the Nightmare Child into custody. Maximise the holding cell – we don’t need another Time War beginning. Though I’m afraid if the Daleks find out about this, all hell will break loose.”

            “Nature of the beast,” smiled Clara.

            “Tell the Doctor he is cleared of all charges. However, one foot out of line, and he will have to face me in person,” the Architect warned ominously. “I’ll pass it on,” Clara replied, stepping to the police box doors.

            The Architect walked graciously back across the Atrium, ordering Judoons to capture the Librarians still unconscious on the ground. She disappeared in a wisp of smoke as Clara turned to open the TARDIS doors. She stepped inside and found the Doctor leaning up against the centre console, facing her. She smiled and tossed him his sonic screwdriver.

            “Thank you,” he whispered with a kind of gratitude Clara had never received from him. As she stepped inside, the blue doors closed behind her.


	12. Brand New Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine years on, The Doctor joins Clara as she returns to Lancashire Cemetery for her yearly visit to see her mother. However, when receiving an unusual distress call from a not-so-unfamiliar planet, the Doctor and Clara discover danger has taken over the biggest library in the universe, and time is running out to stop the malicious plan that is unfolding before the Doctor’s very eyes. But in order to save the day, the Doctor must revisit the planet’s hard-drive and come face-to-face with the woman who changed his life - a woman he left, like a book on a shelf, without a goodbye.

****

**  
CHAPTER TWELVE**

**BRAND NEW SONG**

  
The Library was finally safe. It had been a few hours since the planet had been saved by River, and the Shadow Architect and Judoon finally unsealed the atmosphere, reopening it after the lockdown. They had captured all remaining Librarians that lurked in the shadows, promising to convert them back into the lifeforms that had previously been. The Doctor and Clara left the lobby in the TARDIS and landed in the brightly lit corridor back up on Level Twenty-One.

            “Why are we here, Doctor?” Clara whispered, following the Time Lord out of the police box. The Doctor glanced to his companion, “River said she had taken control the TARDIS and landed us in that room when we first got the Morse Code message.”

            “What, you think she’s landed us there for a reason?”

            “River never tells me things directly. Spoilers,” the Doctor smiled, poking Clara’s nose softly. They continued down the corridor.

            A gigantic hole had blown through the side of the wall ahead. A pair of wooden door that should have been attached to the opposite side of the hallway had too been ripped off their hinges as well. The Doctor turned to Clara and winked, “My TARDIS did this, yes?”

            Clara smirked and nodded. They walked through the wooden pieces and splinters that littered the floor and entered into the reading room the TARDIS had first landed in. The room was lit with warm lights and surprising, everything (apart from the front doors) was intact. Then, the Doctor and Clara saw it.

            Sitting on a stand directly behind where the TARDIS had landed earlier was a blue book. It was the only book in the entire room. “Of course,” scoffed the Doctor with amazement, “this building is called Song Tower so you could never throw away the hardcopy.”

            “Is that River’s?” asked Clara, pointing at the book.

            “The TARDIS was in the way when we landed. That’s why we never saw it,” explained the Doctor, “it’s River’s diary. All of her adventures and thoughts placed on pages in ink.” The Doctor walked across the room and picked up the book from the stand.

            “I think she’d want you to keep it, Doctor,” said Clara, tilting her head with a smile. The Doctor nodded slightly and went to place it into his jacket.

            “Aren’t you going to see if there is a message in it?” asked Clara.

            “Her past is my future, Clara. I can’t read it.”

            “But she’s gone, Doctor. Surely you could read the last page. She’s probably left a message.”

            “But it was sudden. She didn’t even she was going to die –” the Doctor broke off, staring at Clara. A deep silence fell across the room.

            “She said she only had a few minutes before the Rip. I assume she meant being ripped into the Time Vortex. She already knew it was going to be the last time she saw you.”

            The Doctor opened to the last page of the book. His eyes widened and he looked up at Clara, not blinking.

            “Doctor?”

He suddenly dropped the book and ran out of the room, disappearing out through the hole where the doors had been. “Doctor!” shouted Clara, but all she heard was his fading footsteps on the corridor floor outside. Clara picked up the book and opened it to the last page. She read the final entry and gasped:

 

_I’m not dead. Check the Morse code._

_R.S. xox_

 

            Clara raced out of the room at high speed and out into the hallway, still holding onto River’s diary. She suddenly saw the TARDIS flying towards her from the end of the corridor, the lamp atop millimetres away from the ceiling. The doors flew open and the Doctor stood in front of them.

            “STARTING RUNNING!” he roared, a wide grin upon his face.

            Clara began to charge towards the TARDIS, her eyes wide in terror.

            “On three, you’re going to jump!”

            Clara let out of squeal as the distance between her and the police box closed in.

            “One!”

            “This isn’t going to work!” cried Clara, still running towards the blue box.

            “Two!”

            Clara screamed at the top of her lungs.

            “THREE!”

            Clara jumped into the air and flew into the TARDIS, landing perfectly on the Console Platform. She turned around to the Doctor, “let’s do that again!”

            The Doctor laughed as he snapped his fingers, closing the TARDIS doors. On the computer monitor, Clara watched as the TARDIS vanished from the corridor and entered the Time Vortex. The Doctor raced down to the console and pressed some buttons. The Morse code Clara heard on her mobile phone back in the cemetery, played loudly across the Console Room.

            “So there’s another message in this. Clara, what could it be?”

            “Um,” Clara thought for a second as she placed River’s diary on the nearby steps leading to the police box doors, “um … ooh! Another language!”

            “Good thinking!”

            The Doctor fiddled with some knobs and the Morse code warped and buzzed through the speakers. “Hmm … nothing Earth-based,” mumbled the Doctor, “let’s try local galactic languages.”

            There was more warping noises and still the Doctor shook his head. “Nothing.”

            There was silence from the Time Lord again while the Morse code echoed around the Console Room. Clara then had a thought.

            “Of course,” she whispered, looking to the Doctor. “What?” he asked, pressing more buttons on the console.

            “Gallifrey.”

            The Doctor froze, his head lowering slightly, “How did I miss that? She’s part-Time Lord. I’m such an idiot.” He slapped his forehead hard and began inputting the Gallifreyian translation software.

            Clara shook her head fondly. She knew what he was going through. He’d simply forgotten because his mind was on other things. Even though he wasn’t aware it, his brain was still processing the grief that River had gone. In fact, she was still gone. He had no _physical_ evidence other than a diary entry that proved she had survived the Rip that sealed the Crack in the Library’s data core. Clara knew exactly what was going on inside his head – she knew because she’d been there before, nine years ago.

            “Okay. Here we go. Where are you, River …” the Doctor muttered as he pulled the monitor around to face him, “hmm … okay, it’s a holographic file.”

The Doctor tapped the screen and suddenly, a holographic version of River Song appeared on the steps behind them. “Hello sweetie,” River called as both Clara and the Doctor jumped in fright, turning around to the steps.

            “Can she hear us?” whispered Clara, watching the hologram closely. “No,” said the Doctor, his voice broken, “she’s just a recording.”

            “I hope this message gets through to the TARDIS in one piece,” the holographic River began, “by the time you and Clara get this, I will have sealed the Crack in the Library’s computer core and restored all of the books and information that had vanished from the data core. The Time Lords will not be able to use the Crack as a passage anymore, however I can tell you that they’ve had a back-up plan in case this one faulted.”

            The Doctor closed his eyes and sighed. Clara took his hand and held it tight. River continued, “Since the Time Lords broke down their universe’s wall, they are now unable to go back to it. The back-up plan was simple. If the Cracks in Time were to close, the Time Lords would use the Time Vortex as a means of transport and travel into the future where the Cracks that are still sealing and use them just like they did with the Library’s, to enter back into this universe before they closed.”

            The Doctor shook his head, “A plan designed to use its flaw as the back-up. Typical.”

            “But don’t fret, sweetie. I’m joining them on the ride.”

            Clara looked up confused, “What?”

            River continued, as if responding to Clara’s question, “Since I closed that Crack, I have appeared on the opposite side – in the Time Vortex. My growing concern is that when the pocket universe collided into this one, it wasn’t just the Time Lords that were breaking through. You saved something else in that universe, a lot bigger and greater than a civilisation.”

            “Oh, no,” the Doctor uttered, his hand squeezing Clara’s.

            “Doctor, what’s wrong?” asked Clara with a worried voice.

            River answered her question, “Doctor, if the Time Lords were bleeding through the Cracks, then that means the thing from which they came from is coming with them.”

            “And what’s that?!” cried Clara, attempting to ask the hologram a question.

            “Gallifrey. Gallifrey is breaking back into the universe,” the Doctor whispered.

            Clara gulped, shaking her head in disbelief, “But you saw the Crack the Nightmare Child made when he was through. If Gallifrey does the same thing –”

            “It’s going to a lot bigger, I can tell you that,” whispered the Doctor, his voice dry and husky.

            “But like I said in my diary, Doctor, I am not dead. It’s in the future – way in the future so once I’ve acuminated enough regeneration energy from these dying Time Lords here in the Vortex, I will have a brand new body to fight the masterminds behind this all. Brand new body, I like the sound of that,” the hologram River smirked flirtatiously, “Brand new body, brand new Song! I’ll see you around, sweetie!”

            The Doctor chuckled as the hologram vanished.

            Clara looked to the Time Lord, “Doctor …”       

            “Mm?” the Doctor responded, a wide smile appearing on his face.

            “Gallifrey’s coming back,” she replied.

            “Yep,” laughed the Doctor, “and River’s about to introduce herself to its founding fathers.”

            “Are we ever going to see her again?”

            “Oh yes. We’re both lonely psychopaths – we’re inseparable. But I do have to do something.”

            The Doctor turned around to the Console and pushed down the handbrake. The TARDIS groaned alive and after a minute or so, landed silently. The Doctor bent down and picked up River’s diary from the steps. “Follow me,” he said as he exited the police box. Clara followed and soon realised they were back in Lancashire Cemetery. The Doctor wandered off through the graveyard as Clara followed him.

            _Where’s he going,_ Clara thought. She realised he was following the same path she took to go to her mother’s grave. Soon, she appeared by the Doctor’s side. “I saw your Mum once, when you were a little girl. She always had the biggest smile on her face.”

            Clara smirked, “I remember she’d continually get annoyed when I put my hand up in from the camera. I hated photos back then. She’d always said ‘Just smile, Clara. It’s only a picture!’.”

            “She’s right, you know,” whispered the Doctor.

            “What do you mean?” asked Clara.

            “You can take a photo,” the Doctor explained, “that photo holds more just a face, a smile and a background. It holds our memories, conversations and perspectives in a fragment of time; a time that you can never experience ever again, Clara. I have a TARDIS. I can go anywhere and everywhere I like. So when I can go anywhere and everywhere, I can never cherish a moment that I can never ever go back and see, because I can go back and do it all again.”

            Clara smiled and turned to the Doctor, “I assume there is a reason we are here.”

            “I think it’s time I cherish a moment I won’t come back for, but will always remember. If you don’t mind, of course.”

            “By all means,” Clara said, stepping back.

            The Doctor smiled and walked over to the headstone Ellie Oswald’s grave. He dug out a small hole next to it and placed the diary inside it. “Brand new Song,” he whispered, as he buried the diary into the earth.

            The Doctor stood to his feet and walked back over to Clara, “Fancy a trip to the annual _Intergalactic Flower Show_?”

            Clara grinned and they both jogged back to the TARDIS and entered inside. As the doors closed, the lamp atop the police box pulsed blue and after a couple of seconds, the TARDIS began to dematerialise, away from Lancashire Cemetery and into time and space.

 

oOo

 

            Millions of years in the future, a low, misty fog blanketed the rocky surface of Bilbibsky, a deserted and uninhabited dwarf planet. It orbited no sun and was located by no nearby planets. It was completely cut off from any local civilisations and was left abandoned with no population. The surface was made of a hard rock and had no vegetation or life. It was simply dark, dirty and not worth any value. No one had visited the planet in years, however it would inevitably become the battlefield of a war in the near future.

            Among the mist, a brilliant white light appeared and a woman with fuzzy blond hair in a white dress dropped onto the hard, cold surface. She sat up and dusted herself off. River Song looked at her hands, legs and body. She laughed loudly and shouted into the air, “It worked!”

            She stood to her feet and ruffled the dirt out of her hair. She looked up to the sky and sighed happily.

            An enormous Crack ripped across the starry sky; it was miles away from the dwarf planet, yet it stretched from western to eastern horizon. However, what intrigued River the most was the red surface appearing through the Time Winds of the Vortex. The edge of Gallifrey, the Time Lord’s home world, was breaking through the Crack in Time, tearing it open as the entire planet entered back into the Universe.

            River pulled out her small electronic device and began clicking buttons. She finally clicked it off and put it back into her pocket. “Well, well, well,” River called sarcastically as yellow regeneration energy flared from the sides of the Crack, “bring it on, Time Lords. Brand you body, brand new Song! Time to stop your planet from ripping the Universe apart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!  
> I hope you all enjoyed reading this story! It's my first ever Doctor Who FanFiction novel so I really hope you all liked it! I hope I can learn a bit more to improve my writing skills (cuz I know they're not the greatest) but I really hope this won't be my only Doctor Who story. [Message me on Tumblr via thatfilmcomposer ](http://thatfilmcomposer.tumblr.com/ask)and tell me if you really liked it, your thoughts on it and if I should write another ;)
> 
> Thanks for you support, guys! Really means a lot!


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